The president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux in Paris, January 18. (AFP / BERTRAND GUAY)
“We did not listen to the engineers, because it was a symbolic, ideological decision”, commented the president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, on BFMTV this Friday March 31.
On Tuesday 28 March, following the lifting of the German blockade, the 27 EU Member States
definitively approved the end of heat engines
in new cars from 2035, a central measure of the climate plan of the 27. Thus, the text which will force new cars to
no longer emit any CO2
from the middle of the next decade,
de facto prohibiting gasoline, diesel and hybrid vehicles,
in favor of all-electric.
In early March, Berlin stunned its partners by
blocking the settlement
while this had already been approved in mid-February by MEPs meeting in plenary, following a green light from the Member States, including Germany –
a rare flip-flop
at this stage of the procedure.
This Friday, March 31, the president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux commented on this psychodrama linked to the German blockage on the antenna of
BFM TV
“If I were a car buyer,
I would ask myself a lot of questions.”
He also considered that
“we went too fast
to make a decision for which we did not listen to the engineers, because it was a
symbolic, ideological decision”,
he explained. “We understand that we want to go towards the
decarbonization of the economy,
there is no longer any debate in the employers, there is a consensus”, confirmed the boss of bosses.
“We must listen to engineers, scientists,
do not make ideology,
see what is actually possible to do in a given time”, continued Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, comparing the situation with low emission zones (ZFE):
“This is the example where we went too fast.
People won’t be able to change their car in time.”
Paving the way for synthetic fuels
This text is part of the European objective of carbon neutrality by 2050. Germany had asked the Commission to present a proposal paving the way
vehicles running on synthetic fuels.
This technology, controversial and still in development, would consist in producing fuel
from CO2
from industrial activities. Defended by high-end German and Italian manufacturers, it would extend the use of heat engines following 2035.
The European Commission and Germany subsequently announced that they had
found an agreement to unblock the text,
which remains unchanged. Brussels has simply undertaken to
pave the way more clearly for synthetic fuels
in a separate proposal to be validated by autumn 2024.
Vehicles equipped with a combustion engine can be registered following 2035 if they use
exclusively neutral fuels
in terms of CO2 emissions, welcomed German Transport Minister Volker Wissing.
However, in the opinion of many experts, synthetic fuel technology has
little chance of winning
on the market and would in the best case only concern a minority of luxury vehicles. It is contested by environmental NGOs who consider it
costly, energy-intensive and polluting.