European Council approves softened CO2 targets
“The Council today adopted a targeted amendment to the Regulation on CO2 standards for new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles,” as the initiators wrote in a short communication. With the Council’s approval, the amendment has been adopted and the regulation will enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal, which is now only a formality following the final approval.
The amended regulation stipulates that compliance with the specific emissions targets of car manufacturers for the three years 2025, 2026 and 2027 will no longer be assessed annually, but on the basis of the average performance of each manufacturer over these three years. The aim is to give car manufacturers the flexibility they need to achieve their emissions targets for 2025.
The project stems from the EU strategy dialogue on the future of the automotive industry, which was launched at the beginning of the year. When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the results of the EU strategy dialogue at the beginning of March, the weakening of the long-known CO2 targets for 2025 was one of the biggest topics. The targets themselves are not to be adjusted. The draft amendment presented by the EU Commission at the end of March and made official in April introduces the flexibility to fulfil the targets over a three-year period.
This means that a car manufacturer that falls significantly below the CO2 emission limits this year could exceed them next year – and vice versa. At the end of 2027, a balance sheet will be drawn up, and car manufacturers that have achieved their CO2 fleet target on average over the three years would go out without a penalty. Until now, however, the danger of having to pay high fines immediately after 2025 if the 2025 CO2 fleet target is not met has been the bane of the industry.
We discussed the criticism of the averaging of CO2 emissions in detail in this article. In a nutshell, NGOs assume that car manufacturers would have achieved the stricter CO2 targets for 2025 anyway due to rising electric car sales and that the softening would therefore be more detrimental to the spread of electric cars because more combustion engines could be sold again. This could result in the CO2 targets for 2025 being exceeded again after all, only to fulfil them exactly on average later on.
However, the last major hurdle was approval in the EU Parliament three weeks ago. The proposal received 458 votes in favour, 101 against and 14 abstentions. The Council’s approval was then considered a mere formality, which has now also been ticked off.
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