BERLIN (Reuters) -German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday criticised a reported draft EU plan to oblige car rental firms and large companies to buy only electric vehicles from 2030, saying it could contribute to destroying the bloc’s important automotive industry.<\/p>\n
German tabloid Bild Zeitung had on Saturday reported that the EU Commission was considering the move, citing anonymous EU sources. Such corporate fleets make up about 60% of new car sales, it said.<\/p>\n
Merz said the proposals “completely miss the point of the current joint needs we have in Europe”, noting the automotive industry was one of the region’s core industries.<\/p>\n
“We must not allow it to be destroyed by focussing on technologies that might not be market-ready enough by a given date for one to rely exclusively on that single technology,” he told reporters. “That’s why we oppose such rigid specifications.”<\/p>\n
“Europe is not open enough, not fast enough, not dynamic enough \u2014 and I want to help change that” he said.<\/p>\n
Germany has a right to help formulate the EU’s strategic outlook given it finances a quarter of the bloc’s budget, he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (Reuters) -German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday criticised a reported draft EU plan to oblige car rental…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[29725,1305,2000,7335,299,5187,1945,15439],"class_list":{"0":"post-280770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-automotive-industry","9":"tag-electric-vehicles","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-eu-commission","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-german-chancellor"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114893008646237169","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}