“Cosmetic Fix”: EU Parliament Votes to Delay Emission Targets for Car Industry

The European Parliament’s Strasbourg plenary approved an urgent procedure on Tuesday, May 6th, to vote for giving “more flexibility” in how European car manufacturers achieve climate targets in the next few years, presented as a way to save the struggling industry from the consequences of Trump’s tariffs.

The amendment to the 2023 climate regulation—which requires manufacturers to turn their fleet increasingly electric year by year—aims to give auto makers more legroom to reach the required CO2 emission targets by providing a three-year compliance period (2025-2027) instead of separate annual checks. 

In practice, this means delaying the need to comply with the 2025 and 2026 emission targets until the end of 2027, by which all three need to be met. The urgent procedure was accepted by all parliamentary groups, save the Greens and The Left, and the final vote on introducing the measure is scheduled for Thursday, May 8th.

Although they backed the initiative, conservative and populist parties highlighted that the report fails to address the root causes of the problem—ideology-driven green policies hindering competitiveness—and instead called for the complete withdrawal of the climate polices that destroy Europe’s car industry.

The forced transition to electric vehicles by banning the internal combustion engine “is in no way in line with the industrial reality,” said French MEP Jordan Bardella (RN), the chairman of the national conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, which called for a full “strategic reset” instead of a “cosmetic fix” or “half-hearted adjustment.”

“This three-year moratorium will do absolutely nothing, apart from highlighting the failure of industrial policies based on the idea of de-growth,” Bardella added.

We need to get back to the idea of growth and get rid of the ideology of de-growth, which is imposed on our countries by Brussels. We need to give back control to our countries over their economic visions. Our position is very simple: produce, produce, produce!

The other two right-wing groups (ECR and ESN) expressed similar views, especially about the need to scrap at least the emission requirements for heavy-duty vehicles, from which hardly any EVs are being produced in Europe. 

On the other hand, the mainstream members of the ‘Ursula coalition’ (EPP, S&D, and Renew) talked about how regrettable this temporary setback on the road to climate neutrality was, but the industry’s needs cannot be ignored. The establishment supports softening the rules, “but this is not something that we should be cheerful about,” said MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy on behalf of the liberal Renew.

Unsurprisingly, the Greens were fervently opposed to the notion, arguing that European car manufacturers were finally forced to innovate to remain competitive with the Chinese EV industry, and now Brussels lets them off the hook. Never mind that this enforcement might still cause the collapse of the whole industry, innovation or not.