“Give them a finger and they’ll take the whole hand,” Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles with green NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), said in a statement.
The 2035 measure is a key part of the EU’s Green Deal aimed at making the bloc climate neutral by mid-century, but has come under growing political fire.
The VDA now wants to shift from a full ban to a 90 percent CO2 reduction target for new vehicles by 2035. That means 10 percent of vehicles sold could be powered by internal combustion engines.
The proposal caught some German lawmakers off guard.
“The VDA’s position surprised us. We will adhere to the fleet emission limits as stipulated in the coalition agreement, and we expect the EU Commission to do the same,” said Isabel Cademartori, transport policy spokesperson for the Social Democratic Party, the junior partner in Germany’s ruling coalition.
The Christian Democrats of Chancellor Friedrich Merz have been calling for a rethink of the 2035 rule, and are backed by conservative lawmakers in the European Parliament as well as countries with important car industries like Poland and the Czech Republic.