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Street scene in Havana: What does Bernreiter have against Cuban classic cars?
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YAMIL LAGE / AFP
From 2035, only new cars that do not emit any greenhouse gases during operation are to be sold in the European Union.
This latest decision by the EU Parliament is clearly bothering the Bavarian state government.
In any case, the head of department responsible for traffic, Christian Bernreiter, criticizes this vote to stop combustion engines in drastic terms.
"The drivers will not all be forced into electric cars," said the CSU politician in Munich.
“You will see that most of them will hold on to used cars with internal combustion engines for as long as possible,” said Bernreiter.
»From 2035, the cars on our streets will gradually look like they are in Cuba.«
What exactly Bernreiter has against the appearance of Cuban vintage cars, he did not explain in detail.
However, he criticized that the end of combustion engines was hitting non-city states like Bavaria particularly hard: "Especially in rural areas, many people rely on their cars to get to work.
This will not change until 2035.
Not everyone can afford an expensive electric car, has a charging facility at home or gets through the day with one battery charge.« All of these problems were ignored in the European Parliament's decision for ideological reasons.
Söder relies on e-fuels
Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder expressed himself more supportive of the state, but no less drastically.
"The EU's general combustion engine ban from 2035 will damage Bavaria as an industrial location and the employees of the automotive industry," wrote the CSU politician.
»Reducing fossil fuels is correct, but in addition to electromobility, e-fuels and hydrogen also offer great potential for climate-neutral mobility.«
Bavaria's Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters) said on Wednesday: "The ban on combustion engines from 2035 is not actually intended to decarbonize traffic.
The ideologists are concerned with getting rid of the car and preventing individual mobility.« Aiwanger criticized: »There is no other way to explain that clean internal combustion engines of the future, which are powered by biofuel or synfuels, are to be put an end to and hydrogen in the Mobility is blocked by the Greens in the federal government.« However, the purely electric car will not be enough to keep the more than 40 million cars in Germany going, he warned.
At the instigation of the FDP, the federal government had campaigned at EU level to ensure that e-fuels were not excluded from the outset.
The EU Commission had announced that it would examine whether vehicles with such a combustion engine could still be registered in the future.
The member states still have to agree to the EU's resolutions, although this, like Parliament's approval, is only a formality.
apr/dpa