2024-09-14 12:11:07
European climate targets
Internal paper: EU car industry fears for millions of jobs
Updated on 14.09.2024 – 07:46Reading time: 3 min.
Crisis mood in the auto industry: An internal paper from the industry warns of job cuts and billions in fines. An emergency article is supposed to help.
In view of the tense situation in the car industry, an internal paper from the European car industry warns of the loss of millions of jobs. The industry is not in a position to comply with an impending tightening of EU climate regulations, says the letter, which was made available to the German Press Agency in Brussels. “As a result, the EU industry will be faced with billions in fines.”
Those who want to avoid penalties have “little choice but to significantly reduce production, which threatens millions of jobs in the EU,” it says.
The background to this are the so-called fleet limits. These set a limit for the CO2 emissions of cars. This limit must not be exceeded on average for all vehicles registered in the EU in a year. This value is currently 115.1 grams of CO2 per kilometer, per vehicle – measured using the so-called WLTP test procedure. It is set to fall to 93.6 grams in 2025 and to 49.5 grams in 2030. Manufacturers must pay a fine for emitting too much CO2.
When asked, the European Automobile Association (ACEA) said that the association was aware of the document. Acea stressed that it was not an official document from the lobby association. According to dpa information, the letter is authentic and is circulating within the European automobile industry. The financial services provider Bloomberg had also previously reported on the internal document.
“There are no pure combustion engines that emit less than 95.6 g CO2/km,” it says. Hardly any hybrid – that is, a car that has both an electric motor with a battery and a combustion engine – manages to comply with the limit. However, since an average value is calculated, manufacturers can theoretically still stay below the limit by registering electric cars, for example.
The internal document goes on to say that an efficient combustion engine emits an average of around 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Accordingly, one electric car would have to be registered for every four registered combustion engines in order to avoid paying a fine. However, the proportion of registered electric cars is stagnating and is far below the required level.
This could mean fines of 13 billion euros for the sale of cars alone. In addition, there would be a fine of three billion euros for light commercial vehicles such as vans. Although these have different limits, they are also subject to the law. This is an additional burden for the already struggling car industry.
The paper states that one way to avoid the penalties would be to stop the production and sale of more than two million cars with combustion engines. This would correspond to the output of eight factories. This would mean the loss of millions of jobs.
To prevent this from happening, it is proposed to use an emergency article that was already used in the case of Corona. According to the opinion expressed in the paper, the EU Commission could thus postpone the introduction of stricter requirements by two years. Recently, VW Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch also called for a postponement. The German automobile lobby association VDA is pushing for an earlier review than planned of whether the EU requirements are feasible.
Environmentalists reacted angrily to this move. “The move is hard to beat in terms of audacity: The car manufacturers have made over 130 billion euros in profit in the last two years and have had enough time to prepare for the CO2 target that has been known since 2019,” said Sebastian Bock, managing director of the environmental organization Transport & Environment Germany. Now they are demanding that a state of emergency be declared so that they can continue to sell dirty cars.
The article cited in the paper is intended for real emergencies such as Corona or the Ukraine war. “The EU and the federal government must not allow climate protection to fall victim to the management failure of a few car companies,” said Bock.
For Marion Tiemann of Greenpeace, it is “a disgrace when VW’s chief supervisor demands more time for climate protection at the last minute.” The fleet limits were decided more than five years ago, and the company has had plenty of time to adapt. “Complaining about limits that are supposedly too strict cannot hide the lack of a long-term strategy.”
According to industry figures, almost three million people work in the European automotive sector in manufacturing alone. If you include all activities related to the automotive industry, such as the sale of vehicles, the number is around 13 million, according to Acea.