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Is the end of the combustion engine off coming after all?

It is a complicated mantra that Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has prepared for his appearance on February 28th, but he repeats it again and again without errors in slight modifications: "It is important to us that a citizen with a If a vehicle with a combustion engine drives to the registration office after 2035, this vehicle can be registered if it can be shown that it can only be operated with synthetic fuels.

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Is the end of the combustion engine off coming after all?

It is a complicated mantra that Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has prepared for his appearance on February 28th, but he repeats it again and again without errors in slight modifications: "It is important to us that a citizen with a If a vehicle with a combustion engine drives to the registration office after 2035, this vehicle can be registered if it can be shown that it can only be operated with synthetic fuels."

On this day, Wissing acts as if that were a matter of course, but it is not at all. Up until two weeks ago, his ministry had repeatedly signaled that Germany could agree to the compromise found at EU level on phasing out combustion engines.

Wissing's people had even sold it as a success of the FDP ministry that cars with fossil fuel combustion engines may no longer be registered from 2035, but the EU Commission should at least examine how vehicles can be registered that run exclusively on synthetic fuels, so-called E fuels, driving.

But such an examination is no longer enough for Wissing - and that of all days before Germany's voting behavior on this issue was to be finally determined in Berlin.

Negotiators from the member states, the EU Parliament and the Commission agreed on the end of combustion engines in October. In a so-called trilogue, that is a mediation committee made up of representatives of the three institutions. That cleared things up.

Finally, Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) also approved the plans at the meeting - after consultation with the traffic light coalition, i.e. also with Wissing. The European Parliament approved the trilogue result in mid-February, the vote of the EU states is still pending. The vote is scheduled for March 7th. It is actually considered a formality, after all, the Mediation Committee had agreed on it.

But now everything is different. "Wissing could torpedo the deal," says an insider in Brussels familiar with the trilogue negotiations. "It is unlikely that he will really succeed in the end, but it is quite possible." The prerequisite is that the federal government find allies on March 7th who also want to overturn the ban on combustion engines. A possible partner could be Italy. In addition, one or the other state in Eastern Europe. Three allies are needed to block the project.

There is a lot of criticism of the German Minister of Transport from the EU Parliament. "Volker Wissing's threat should once again distract from the fact that the FDP was ripped off by its traffic light partners when it came to the combustion engine end," says Jens Gieseke from the EPP parliamentary group. "In the meantime, the procedure at EU level has long been over."

According to Gieseke, if you want to enforce political positions, then you have to introduce them into legislation at an early stage and not afterwards. Others see it similarly. "It would be a fatal signal if Germany were to tip the combustion engine out now," says Michael Bloss, climate policy spokesman for the Greens in the EU Parliament. "There is a risk that Germany will become Europe's climate brakes." In addition, according to Bloss, the federal government would prove to be an unreliable negotiating partner if it backed away from the agreements that had been reached.

Formally, Wissing has no right of veto against the planned ban on combustion engines. He can't even force Germany to reject the compromise. Strictly speaking, he is not even responsible, but the topic falls within the remit of Environment Minister Lemke.

But if the federal government does not agree on how to vote in Brussels, Germany traditionally has to abstain - or there will be a coalition scandal. But one abstention, according to the calculations in the Ministry of Transport, could well be enough to prevent the end of combustion engines.

Although Wissing claims that he "didn't count the votes", it already seems clear that the Italians will speak out against the end of the internal combustion engine. "There are other states that are considering it," says Wissing, but doesn't want to go into more detail. In any case, there could be a situation where not enough states vote for the ban.

This is at least conceivable in other federal ministries. Wissing tries to shift the blame for the late turnaround on EU Commissioner Frans Timmermans. He had made offers to talk to the Vice President and Commissioner responsible for climate protection, but he had not accepted them.

Timmermans has also not submitted a proposal on how to ensure that combustion engines powered exclusively by e-fuels can also be approved after 2035. However, it is questionable when such a proposal should be presented. In any case, the negotiated compromise did not mention that the regulation had to be in place before Germany could agree.

But that's how Wissing always wanted it communicated. "Unfortunately, there was no proposal, so the Federal Republic of Germany cannot agree to the trilogue proposal," he says. "That shouldn't come as a surprise to the EU Commission, as they knew that a proposal had to be made, but it wasn't." One is now at the point where the Commission has to keep its promises.

"Germany is very reliable here," says Wissing. "We have a clear stance: we want what is in the coalition agreement to be implemented." But what is in the traffic light government's coalition agreement was anything but clear from the start: "We are committed to this outside of the existing system of fleet limits that it can be proven that only vehicles that can be refueled with e-fuels can be newly registered," it says.

But what exactly is meant by "outside the system of fleet limits" remained open. In fact, all passenger cars in Europe fall under the system of fleet limit values ​​- and this stipulates that CO₂ emissions must fall to zero by 2035.

Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing wants to block the EU plans to phase out combustion engines. Accordingly, from 2035 no new combustion cars should come onto the market. According to Wissing, however, the use of synthetic fuels must also be possible after 2035.

Source: WORLD

It is also unclear how it should be ensured that new cars with combustion engines can only fill up with artificial fuels from 2035 onwards. Wissing claims that there are technical possibilities for this, but it is up to industry to develop them.

However, the interest of car manufacturers in new models with combustion engines, which can only use e-fuels with a special tank nozzle, for example, is considered to be extremely low. Especially since the synthetic fuels are not only expensive, they are also only available in very small quantities to date.

Wissing also admits that there is "not enough of it at the moment", but he considers it a chicken-and-egg problem. Once it is ensured that there will still be a new car market for e-fuels in Europe after 2035, that will change. "E-fuels are needed, without e-fuels climate neutrality in transport is unthinkable."

Contradiction comes here from environmentalists. "What the EU Commission and Parliament have decided and even the car manufacturers have long since accepted, Transport Minister Wissing does not want to admit: e-fuels are energy wasters," says Benjamin Stephan from Greenpeace. "This inefficient and overly expensive fuel will not play a role for cars - certainly not for new cars in 2035. E-cars drive five times as far with the same amount of electricity as with e-fuels."

Other experts also do not believe in the widespread use of artificial fuels in cars; they are actually needed in order to be able to operate other modes of transport such as ships, airplanes and heavy trucks in a climate-neutral manner.

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