EU Lawmakers Cut the 2035 Car CO2 Target to 87.5 Per Cent

The European Parliament's environment committee voted on Wednesday 4 November 2026 to set the 2035 carbon dioxide reduction target for new cars at 87.5 per cent rather than 100 per cent, undoing the effective ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars that the EU adopted in 2023. Manufacturers would be able to cover a further 7.5 per cent by using low-carbon steel made in the EU, taking the nominal total to 95 per cent, Reuters reported from Brussels.

The committee went below the European Commission's own position. In December 2025 the Commission had proposed softening the target to a 90 per cent cut, with the remaining 10 per cent made up from low-carbon steel and alternative fuels. The committee's figure is lower on the tailpipe and narrower on the compensation, since only steel qualifies. Small or highly efficient electric vehicles would also earn super credits, which count more than once towards a manufacturer's compliance. The target for vans falls from 90 per cent to 80 per cent, and mandatory targets for the share of zero-emission cars in corporate fleets were downgraded to aspirational goals in parallel votes the same day.

Three groups that used to vote the other way

The compromise was written by the centre-right European People's Party, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew Europe group. Those three carried the original standards through the 2019 to 2024 Parliament alongside the Greens. The transport and industry committees had already approved a similar version on 22 October 2026, so the environment committee was the last of the three to fall into line.

Peter Liese, the EPP's climate policy spokesperson, framed the result as technology neutrality rather than retreat. "We want climate neutrality, but with the rules we have now agreed on, we are also ensuring technology neutrality," he said. "I am personally convinced that the future belongs to electric cars. But electric vehicles with range extenders and plug-in hybrids with a long electric range will also have a role to play in 2035 and beyond."

The objection is about investment signals, not tailpipes

Michael Bloss, a German Green MEP, called the vote a bad deal for the European car industry rather than for the climate. "While sales of electric cars are skyrocketing, the majority of the European Parliament is sending a signal of uncertainty," he told Euronews. "The fact that Social Democrats and Conservatives are helping to jeopardise investment security and industrial jobs is a contradiction that could hardly be more glaring." The campaign group T&E said the vote was another step in the wrong direction and that admitting biofuel-powered cars would divert investment away from electrification and weaken the sector against Chinese competitors.

The industrial case the EPP is answering is real. EU car production remains roughly 19 to 20 per cent below its 2019 level, according to the think tank Bruegel, against rising energy costs and Chinese competition in the segments European manufacturers had expected to defend. The vote also lands five days before COP31 opens in Antalya, where the pledges already on the table add up to a 6 per cent cut in global emissions by 2035, as Parallax Nexus reported on 27 October. The EU arrives at that summit having just loosened one of the few binding sectoral measures it could point to.

The honest reading is that 95 per cent is not 87.5 per cent plus a rounding error. A tailpipe reduction and a credit earned at a steel mill are different physical quantities, and treating them as interchangeable moves the abatement from a vehicle fleet that lasts fifteen years to an input whose carbon content is measured by a separate accounting regime. How the steel credit will be verified has not been set out.

Nothing is law yet. The full assembly votes on the auto package in December, which fixes Parliament's negotiating position, and the Council of member governments is still deliberating. France and Germany agreed in October on a 90 per cent cut with no compensatory measures and have put that to other capitals, which means the two largest car-producing member states currently sit above the committee's number. What is not known is whether the December plenary holds the 87.5 per cent figure or moves back towards the Commission's 90 per cent, and no institution has published an estimate of the additional emissions the change implies.