(Bloomberg) -- German Finance Minister Christian Lindner urged the European Union to abandon its goal of effectively phasing out the combustion engine in just over a decade.
He also ruled out further subsidies to help his country’s carmakers to compete with Chinese electric vehicles but said the wider “framework conditions” should be reconsidered.
“The end of the combustion engine in 2035 is not only too early, I think we do not need that date,” Lindner told Bloomberg Television in an interview in New York on Wednesday. “We should be open for all technologies, and even the combustion engine is possible to be used climate-neutral with synthetic fuels.”
The EU’s plan to effectively ban the combustion engine in new cars from 2035 is one of the main pillars of the Green Deal by aiming to tackle emissions from road transport — the only sector in the region to see pollution rise since 1990. Yet the bloc’s carmakers, like Germany’s Volkswagen AG, are at risk of falling behind the required targets across their fleets and have been buffeted by a slowdown in sales of electric vehicles, as well as stiff competition from China.
While Lindner’s Free Democrats have long been skeptical of the goal and succeeded in forcing the European Commission to create a carve-out for e-fuels — made using renewable power and captured CO2 — the idea of scrapping the date altogether underscores both tensions within Germany’s governing coalition and the EU at large.
Italy has said it wants to bring forward a proposed review of the target from 2026 to early next year, and create a further exemption for biofuels.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, affirmed the 2035 goal in a written reply to questions from lawmakers in the European Parliament as part of his effort to secure a second term. He noted that the goal provided “predictability” for investors and manufacturers.
--With assistance from John Ainger.
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