The EU Commission has proposed watering the ban down, although not by much.
The latest Capital Letter is focused on the new China shock and, more specifically, the plight of the German auto and engineering sectors, which are now under fierce pressure from the Chinese competitors that mercantilism built. The prospect of Chinese retaliation will make it tricky for the EU, which sets the rules governing its member-states’ external trade, to impose, where appropriate, substantially higher tariffs on Chinese imports. It could, however, stop hobbling European manufacturers with the high energy and regulatory costs associated with the reckless and futile pursuit of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. For now, the willingness to abandon this wild gas chase does not exist. A (probably) more politically feasible step would be to help automakers by either scrapping (the better option) or diluting and significantly postponing the proposed near-ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine cars (ICEVs) due to kick in after January 1, 2035.
Near-ban? Yes.
Following growing concern about the havoc being caused by the prospect of an absolute ban in 2035 (which would, piling insanity upon insanity, have also included hybrids) the EU Commission has proposed watering the ban down, although not by much. These tweaks include replacing the total prohibition on selling new ICEVs with rules that would allow automakers to keep selling them so long as the average emissions associated with the ICEVs they sell do not exceed 10 percent of their 2021 levels. It is an insultingly feeble gesture toward common sense made feebler still by the requirement that the 10 percent concession be offset by credits for the use of low-carbon steel and renewable fuels. In a note for the European Trade Union Institute, Béla Galgóczi, who is no fan of the proposal (“confusing signal both to industry and consumers” and so on) reported that “one industry executive has estimated that the stringent conditions imply that manufacturers would only be allowed to release about 3 per cent of their 2021 emissions.”
The proposal has not yet passed into law. It has yet to be approved by the Council of the EU (not to be confused with the European Council), a body made up of ministers from the member states) and the EU’s parliament. The coming fight over that may explain the tone of a story by Politico’s Jordyn Dahl that the Commission had “caved” (caved?) to “fierce political pressure from the car industry and from Germany and allied capitals, as well as from the center-right European People’s Party, the political family to which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen belongs.” That sounds a bit like democratic politics in action, a rare phenomenon in Brussels, which may explain Dahl’s obvious alarm.
Dahl writes that the Commission “ignored its own advice to maintain a bloc-wide combustion engine ban.” To put that another way, the Commission rejected the advice of advisers (it happens!) from its Directorate General (department) for Climate Action, a department that can safely be assumed to be filled with climatist zealots. The advisers argued that “for our future industrial competitiveness, it is extremely important to continue providing certainty to the market and investors.” Given how much climatists have done to wreck the EU’s industrial competitiveness, that was a bold tack to take.
The Commission, strange as it may seem, cannot always put climate policy first and so it rejected Climate Action’s advice and bent just a little in response to the pressure, Dahl reports, “from member countries — led by Germany and including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia — as well as the car industry to modify the 2035 law.” I would think that Germany and Italy and, for that matter, the car industry, might know something about the car market, but apparently that doesn’t impress Dahl, who continues:
The pressure hasn’t stopped. Automakers and their political allies are now lobbying to further weaken the rules as competition from Chinese carmakers intensifies and European manufacturers such as Volkswagen cut jobs and close factories.
The EPP, which campaigned on overturning the ban, is the lead negotiator on the issue in the European Parliament. Its draft report goes even further than industry demands, effectively lowering the targets to a 73% emissions cut by giving larger offsets through alternative fuels and green steel.
In other words, the EPP, the largest grouping in the EU parliament, is trying to do what its voters elected it to do. Shocking. And European car companies are worried about the increasingly dire state of their business? Also shocking!
Fifty-eight percent of the respondents in a March 2026 six-country Politico survey were opposed to the ICEV 2035 ban, a result that would probably be replicated elsewhere in much of the EU. What, if anything, the ban’s opponents would replace it with is unclear, but they are unlikely to be satisfied with the scraps the Commission is now proposing throwing their way. In none of those six countries was there a majority in favor of the ban. Opposition was strongest in Belgium (72 percent) and Germany (60 percent).
A few months before, an ARD-DeutschlandTREND poll found that 67 percent of Germans were opposed to the ban, including 94 percent of supporters of the populist-right AfD, three quarters of those who back the center-right CDU/CSU and even 55 percent of those who favor the center-left SPD. The only voters sticking with the ban were Greens or supporters of the far-left Die Linke.
The overwhelming opposition to the ban from supporters of the AfD is one indication of how the radicalized “centrism” of Germany’s political class (in this case its climatism), is pushing voters toward the populist right. But the number that should most alarm German’s embattled chancellor, the CDU/CSU’s Friedrich Merz, is the strength of opposition to the ban among his own supporters. If he cannot persuade the EU to agree to a far more significant easing of the ban, it will be one more reason for unhappy center-right voters to look elsewhere, and it won’t be to their left.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s RN is also opposed to the ban, criticizing it (accurately) as écologie punitive and a job-killer, a stance that is unlikely to hurt her in next year’s presidential election, especially if the European auto sector is, as looks likely, in an even deeper mess by then.
As a reminder, the auto sector accounts for about 7 percent of Europe’s GDP and supports some 14 million jobs.