Markus Buchheit, an MEP of the ESN group, stated:
“Under the current EU rules, from the year 2035 new vehicles with internal-combustion engines are to no longer be registered. However, the now-announced ‘phase-out of the phase-out’ amounts to sham measures that still subordinate consumer choice to a climate diktat and restrict technological openness. This represents a serious intervention in the economic foundations of the automotive sector, which—with the most employees and the highest industry turnover—is Germany’s most important key industry.
Instead of a real U-turn, the European Commission continues to insist on a back-door ban on internal-combustion engines. This is deceiving voters and changes nothing about the facts: with the combustion-engine phase-out, the EU is causing lasting damage to Germany as a business location. Brussels is interfering precisely in Germany’s most important industry and regulating the internationally successful internal-combustion-engine model out of the market. We can already see the effects: numerous companies in the automotive sector are having to close, cut jobs, or relocate their production to more business-friendly countries abroad.”
Buchheit therefore calls for a complete end to the internal-combustion-engine phase-out — without ifs or buts and without half-baked interim solutions that do not solve the problem but merely seek to obscure it.
