In the days ahead, the Commission will present the revision of the CO₂ standards, the most consequential part of the Automotive Package. It will determine whether Europe keeps a competitive automotive industry and affordable mobility, or whether we continue down a path driven by targets that may look good on paper but are bound to fail in reality.
To avoid the latter, the very foundations on which the EU built its automotive legislation must be corrected. This starts with revising the 2030 target, deleting the 2035 ban, and restoring flexibility, so that all technologies reducing emissions can contribute to a real-world results.
We must stop pretending that the implementation of the current CO₂ rules for cars and vans will unfold exactly as policymakers imagined years ago.
They were designed for a different world — one with cheap energy, smooth supply chains without barriers, and steeply rising consumer confidence in battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). That world no longer exists.
Good on paper but unrealistic in practice
As the world order changes, Europe’s automotive sector is under pressure unlike anything we have seen in decades. Global competition is intensifying, trade barriers are rising and supply chains are being disrupted. While the US pushes derisking, Europe is increasingly dependent on Asia for critical EV materials and technologies. The race to decarbonize vehicles has become a race for life. A race for existence of European automotive industry as a whole.
We are already seeing the impacts of the discrepancy between plans and reality today: job losses across key parts of the value chain; cars becoming less affordable for mid and lower income families; and while BEV uptake is progressing rapidly in a selected few Member States, it’s stagnating in many others.
Yet the current regulatory framework assumes the opposite: steady BEV demand across the EU, a large local battery supply chain, cheap renewable electricity available at all times, and a rapid, uniform and massive rollout of charging infrastructure.
None of this has materialized.
Meanwhile, companies face high production costs, regulatory complexity and intensifying global pressure. Europe risks losing industrial capacity precisely when it needs to strengthen it.
Under these conditions, the 2030 and 2035 targets won’t be met.
If in 2035 every second car sold in Europe is battery-electric, that by itself would already be an enormous achievement. But, instead of celebrating this, the current regulatory framework would “reward” this achievement with penalties, forcing EU companies to buy emission credits from foreign competitors.
This is self-sabotage.
A transition that people cannot afford and that companies cannot implement is a transition that will benefit no one.
Why are we only focusing on new sales?
In Central and Eastern Europe, the gap is even wider. Lower purchasing power and reliance on used cars push millions of citizens outside the transition.
Europe renews its vehicle fleet at barely 4% a year. In my home country, Czechia, the average car on the road is 16.5 years old and getting older each year. When new cars become too expensive and preferred car types unavailable, people keep old, more polluting cars for longer. This is the direct result of today’s framework.
Even if we ban combustion engines in 2035, vehicles registered in 2034 will still be driven in the 2050s and early 2060s. Yet the current CO₂ rules focus almost entirely on new sales, while most emissions come from the cars already on the road. Instead of promoting range of technologies to reduce those emissions, we are locking ourselves into a BEV-only pathway.
A good example is CO₂ neutral fuels. The technology exists, but the political will does not. Because nowadays these fuels cannot count towards compliance, there is no real business case to scale them up, even though they are the best option capable of reducing emissions stemming from the existing fleet. The same is true for advanced hybrids and range-extender concepts. If the rules push manufacturers into a single solution, everything else will eventually disappear. Not because the technologies don’t work, but because the regulatory framework makes them commercially impossible.
Why should climate policy be dogmatic when pragmatism would deliver better results?
A credible climate strategy cannot depend on one drivetrain alone. Europe needs a broader toolbox to cut emissions from both new vehicles and from the dozens of millions already on the road. There is no single, perfect solution for 11 million vehicle buyers each year. A wide range of mission specific drivetrains is the answer. In other words, the technology neutrality.
Lessons from the past legislative term
The last CO₂ revision in the European Parliament was shaped almost entirely through an environmental lens, as it allowed the Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety (ENVI) to impose its vision. The outcome is visible today: a framework strong on green ambition but weak on feasibility.
CO₂ standards are no longer a niche environmental tool. They are one of the Europe’s most consequential industrial, R&D- and energy-related legislations. They determine where factories are built and whether European products remain competitive.
That is why the upcoming revision must be assigned to a joint committee procedure, with two committees working as equal partners. ENVI brings environmental ambition, the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) adds industrial realism and focus on technology and innovations.
This is the minimum requirement for balanced, responsible law-making on a file that touches more than 13 million jobs and every European household owning a car.
We are personally committed to working constructively to deliver a CO₂ framework that is credible in practice, not only in theory. A framework that removes the ideological 2035 ban, maintains technology openness, strengthens industrial competitiveness, ensures mobility remains affordable.
This time, we must get the fundamentals right. Our carmakers will not get another chance.
Ondřej Krutílek, ITRE Committee Deputy Coordinator (ECR Group)
Elena Donazzan, Vice-Chair of ITRE Committee (ECR Group)
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