EU Greens: E-fuels not completely ruled out for combustion engines
Published: Wednesday, Jul 10th 2024, 20:10
Updated At: Thursday, Jul 11th 2024, 01:58
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In EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's efforts to secure the votes of MEPs for a second term of office, compromises are emerging with the Greens. Following a visit by von der Leyen to her parliamentary group, co-chair Terry Reinkte spoke of a constructive exchange.
Her counterpart Bas Eickhout emphasized in a joint statement that it was important that there would be no weakening of the Green Deal. With the Green Deal, the EU wants to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.
When asked whether it would be seen as a weakening if the legal basis for the so-called combustion engine phase-out was revised, Eickhout said that it would be unacceptable to change the target for cars to be climate-neutral from 2035. Regarding the role of e-fuels, he said that they were already enshrined in the law in a recital. In this sense, they are not completely excluded. The recitals are not legally binding.
The EU has actually decided that from 2035, only new cars that do not emit any climate-damaging CO2 during operation should be registered. At the insistence of the FDP, the German government had argued that there should be exemptions for e-fuels.
These are synthetic fuels that can theoretically be used to operate combustion engines in a climate-neutral way. However, they are relatively expensive and are urgently needed in aviation, for example. This is because it is more difficult to operate aircraft electrically on a large scale than cars.
In order to retain her top post for another five years, von der Leyen must secure the support of a majority of MEPs in the new EU Parliament. An informal alliance formed by her European party family EPP with the Social Democrats (S&D) and Liberals (Renew) theoretically has a comfortable majority of around 400 of the 720 votes. However, it is considered possible that some MEPs will deviate from the group line in the secret ballot and not vote for the German. This is why von der Leyen is also trying to win votes from other parliamentary groups.
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