“Merkel rejects Schulz’s e-car quota”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected a proposal by social democratic (SPD) frontrunner Martin Schulz to introduce a mandatory European quota for electric cars, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. “What are we going to do if the quota is not met?”, Merkel said during an election campaign event of her conservative party CDU. The CDU parliamentary group’s vice head Michael Fuchs criticised Schulz for neither specifying a date nor a number for the e-car quota, adding that nobody knew which technology for car engines was going to prevail in the end. Germany’s economy minister Brigitte Zypries and environment minister Barbara Hendricks (both SPD) defended the quota: Zypries said Europe had to become “the leading market” for e-mobility while Hendricks argued that after France and the UK announced plans to phase out the combustion engine, a European quota could only fail due to Germany’s resistance.

Read an online version of the article in German here and a Reuters article in English on Merkel’s remarks here.

See the CLEW dossier Vote2017 – German elections and the Energiewende, the CLEW article German carmakers pledge diesel software updates and buyer’s bonus and the factsheet The debate over an end to combustion engines in Germany for background.