{"id":1849,"date":"2025-12-16T00:52:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/press-release\/combustion-ban-were-backtracking-on-climate-goals\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T15:28:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T13:28:26","slug":"combustion-ban-were-backtracking-on-climate-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/press-release\/combustion-ban-were-backtracking-on-climate-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"Combustion ban: \u201cWe\u2019re backtracking on climate goals!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"1849\" class=\"elementor elementor-1849 elementor-1739\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e2c8472 e-con-full e-flex e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"e2c8472\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-bd3f878 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"bd3f878\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Following today\u2019s plenary debate on the future of EU climate and transport policy, Volt MEP Kai Tegethoff criticised the plans proposed by the European Commission\u2019s to backtrack on the 2035 combustion-engine phase-out, a cornerstone of the EU\u2019s strategy to decarbonise road transport and meet climate goals. The Commission plans to relax the ban, allowing a limited share of internal-combustion and hybrid vehicles to remain on sale beyond 2035 rather than fully zero-emission vehicles. At the same time, targets for the electrification of corporate fleets remain low and unclear.  <\/span><\/p><p> <\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cToday\u2019s proposal turns any climate ambition into a relic of the past. If we let short-term industrial lobbying overwrite Europe\u2019s climate commitments, we betray both our climate targets and the next generation\u201d, said Tegethoff, both member of the Committees on Transport and on Environment.<\/span><\/p><p> <\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He emphasised that weakening the ban undermines the EU\u2019s credibility on climate leadership at a time when competitor markets are accelerating electrification, and when science clearly demands faster decarbonisation of transport.<\/span><\/p><p> <\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cDelaying the inevitable is not leadership \u2013 it\u2019s procrastination dressed in regulatory loopholes. We should be busy building the charging infrastructure and market incentives for electric mobility, not inventing excuses to keep polluting engines on the road.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p> <\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the same time, the package falls short of defining a clear commitment to decarbonise corporate fleets. \u201cThis could have been a strong incentive for companies to invest in electric vehicles \u2013 and would lead to an affordable and available EVs on the second hand market in the near future. But the Commission\u2019s proposal fails to deliver. Electrifying corporate fleets remains a suggestion, not a binding regulation, with great flexibility between member states and trucks are not even considered in the plan. So we\u2019re not only complaining that we cannot reach our targets, we\u2019re not even trying.\u201d <\/span><\/p><p> <\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tegethoff also warned that in its current form, the automotive package will jeopardise investment in zero-emission vehicles, making Europe less competitive globally: \u201cIf we water down our own climate rules, we simply hand the future over to others. Lowering our targets will not help Europe\u2019s struggling automotive industry. It will eventually erase their presence in the global market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kai Tegethoff (Volt) criticizes the outcome of today\u2019s plenary debate on the future of transport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1849"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2072,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions\/2072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaitegethoff.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}