Member States tempt the EU Commission to review beforehand CO2 targets vehicles legislation

A new proposal on the European CO₂ emissions legislation for light commercial vehicles shattered the agenda of the last EU Competitiveness Council meeting. The Italian Minister for Businesses and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, is lobbying to persuade the European Commission to release the assessment report on the effectiveness and impact of the regulation, which has been in force since May 2023.

According to the law, “the Commission shall monitor and report annually on how the gap referred to in the first subparagraph evolves from 2021 onwards and shall, as soon as sufficient data is available, and no later than 31 December 2026, publish a report setting out a methodology for a mechanism to adjust the average specific emissions of CO₂ of the manufacturer as of 2030″.

Minister Urso claimed to have gained a sufficient majority of countries that backed the proposal. After having consulted many colleagues, he said that Italy will not question the target for 2035, setting out the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans. In his view, the assessment has to be delivered by the first half of the year and propose an investment fund to support the value chain and the demand for zero-emissions light vehicles and include biofuels in the common EU methodology that the Commission is called upon developing by 2025 for assessing the entire life cycle of CO₂ emissions of cars and vans placed on the EU market. The recommendations of the Mario Draghi report echoes like a mantra in this political appeal.

The Italian government is also stressing the definition of a strategy to ensure European autonomy in battery production, using critical raw materials extracted and processed on the continent. Urso clearly told journalists on the margins of his institutional commitments in Brussels that the alternative remains to postpone the 2035 target without following these conditions.

A diplomatic source familiar with the facts said that the Ministers of Spain, Austria, Netherlands, Romania, Malta, and Poland welcomed their Italian colleague’s proposal for an earlier deadline. Slovakia, Czechia, Germany, and Latvia also stressed the need to equip the EU with adequate financial resources to support European industry in that challenge.

For the review to be brought forward, an EU Commission legislative proposal to amend the regulation is needed. The EU Executive already said that the 2026 deadline to assess the impact of the new legislation “is appropriate.”

The ministers’ discussion during the meeting also focused on the state aid framework and its contribution to EU policy objectives. “Some Member States asked that certain elements of the temporary state aid framework should remain and should be a general policy instrument,” Hungarian State Secretary for Economic Development Mate Loga reported to journalists in an end-of-meeting press conference. The discussion focuses on whether shifting from the temporary framework rules on state aid to pre-crisis state aid rules is worthwhile.

Ministers gave their final approval to a regulation establishing the IMERA mechanism (Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act). This new framework will be based on measures intended to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to future emergencies by monitoring possible upcoming crises, activating vigilance or emergency modes as and when they happen, and coordinating responses at the EU and member state levels.

The Council adopted its position at first reading on the reform of the Single European Sky, which aims to improve the performance, organization, and management of airspaces in the EU. Member States have to designate a national supervisory authority to assess the compliance of air navigation service providers with specific requirements. Financial sustainability and organizational structure are among them. The air navigation service providers and the national supervisory authority can be part of the same organization, provided they are functionally separated and meet independence requirements.

Merging economic and safety oversight functions in the same administrative entity is possible, as this solution cuts red tape and adapts to existing organizational models. Air traffic service providers can voluntarily open certain air navigation services to market conditions. Member states may decide to authorize the opening of air traffic services for airports and/or approach control to market conditions.