Green Party open for compromise on combustion engine ban

Germany’s Green Party is open to discuss its prominent election campaign demand to ban combustion engines in newly registered vehicles by 2030, Claudia Kade, Birger Nicolai, Philipp Vetter write in Die Welt. “We Greens are not determined to phase out combustion engines but rather to achieve the zero-emissions car,” deputy parliamentary group leader Oliver Krischer told the newspaper. If carmakers managed to replace oil in combustion engines with “climate-neutral synthetic fuels”, the Greens would welcome such a solution, Krischer said. The Greens’ demand has turned out to be a major splitting point in coalition talks on transport policy with the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the pro-business FDP. “The party now insists that its demand for a ban was directed solely at combustion engines that run on fossil fuels,” the authors write.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet The debate over an end to combustion engines in Germany for more information.