The European Parliament has voted on an ambitious proposal on the reduction of polluting gases produced by cars by 2030. By 2021, according to current plans, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are among the causes of global warming, should decrease by 20 percent from 2005 levels; according to the proposal approved today by Parliament, in 2030 emissions should decrease by 40% compared to the levels foreseen in 2021, with an intermediate target of 20% by 2025 (the first proposal spoke of 45%). The proposal was voted by a very narrow majority and now goes to the Council, which could approve a more modest target: we are talking about 35 per cent.
The proposal has been among the most discussed in recent months by environmentalists and automobile lobbyists. On the one hand, the transport sector is the only one that has not cut its greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, and has so far been loosely regulated (although the EU has already committed to reducing overall gas emissions greenhouse by 40 percent by 2030). On the other hand, several countries are highly dependent on the car market and fear that further regulation could lead to relocations and job losses.
This is the reason, for example, why the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has asked that the reduction of emissions contained in the new measure be stopped at 30 per cent, as initially foreseen by the European Commission (the German car industry produces about a quarter of the GDP of the country). Speaking with Fact before the vote, M5S MEP Eleonora Evi – who followed the legislative process as shadow rapporteur of the proposal – explained that “there are very strong pushes to bring it closer to the Commission's initial provision, or even to bring objectives below the proposed levels “.
The same pressures are already putting pressure on the Council of the European Union, which in the coming months will discuss the proposals approved today. Euractiv writes that a group of 19 states has already agreed to a 40 percent reduction, the same quota approved today by Parliament. To reach a qualified majority requires the accession of a last state. Much will depend on what Austria, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council, does: it could join the states pushing for 40 percent, or seek a compromise at 35 percent (the same threshold it had proposed in Parliament after many the European People's Party, the main center-right party). Finally, the proposal provides that by 2025 a market share of 20 per cent of new vehicles must be dedicated to “zero and low emission” products, ie electric cars: the share will have to rise to 35 per cent by 2030.
Parliament's proposal contains other measures that seek to shift the car industry towards less polluting products: Article 11, for example, obliges car manufacturers to test new technologies within one year with test drives – a way to make controls even more stringent after the so-called “dieselgate” scandal – while Article 2 encourages the Commission to update the weight limits of light commercial vehicles, to take into account the bulkier batteries and engines that the less polluting ones need.
According to a report by the environmental research center Transport & Environment, even a 40 percent compromise would reduce transport-related emissions by only half the quota agreed in the 2016 Paris accords for 2030: “To achieve these goals, countries would still have to adopt very radical policies such as raising fuel taxes or banning cars in city centers “, summarizes Euractiv.
