Poland seeking to build coalition against EU ban on petrol and diesel cars

Poland’s government has announced that it is opposed to an EU plan to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035 and is attempting to build a coalition of countries against it.

“I would like to make it clear that the position of the Polish government is negative,” government spokesman Piotr Müller told state broadcaster TVP after a cabinet meeting.

“There currently isn’t sufficient infrastructure for electric cars in the European Union and in Poland,” he added. “Besides, the current range of electric cars isn’t big enough to warrant abandoning the production of internal combustion cars.”

Müller also noted that the new geopolitical situation after Russia’s attack on Ukraine means that “we need to effectively prevent solutions that could cause negative economic consequences for citizens”.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and climate minister Anna Moskwa have been holding talks with other governments in a bid to build a coalition of states opposing the ban, Müller explained.

Poland has received the backing of the Czech Republic, he claimed, noting that this country is taking over the EU’s rotating presidency in July and is expected to take the lead in blocking and delaying the proposed ban.

Moskwa this week also described the proposed ban as “unacceptable for Poland”. She warned that “neither the market nor the public is ready for it” and “society will not accept such ideas”, reports Polskie Radio.

The government in 2016 announced plans to have one million electric vehicles on Polish roads by 2025. However, low take-up of a scheme to subsidise the cost of purchasing electric vehicles and delays in plans for a Polish-made electric car have forced it to scale back those ambitions.

In 2019, after only 1,324 electric cars had been registered in Poland the previous year, the government lowered its target to having 600,000 electric and hybrid vehicles by 2030. By the end of May this year, just under 49,000 electric cars were registered in Poland.

Earlier this month, the European Parliament voted to back the European Commission’s proposal for a ban on new CO2-emitting vehicles by 2035. The measure was passed by 339 votes to 249 with 24 abstentions, despite strong lobbying from industry groups.

Pascal Canfin, a French centrist MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, called the vote “a historic decision that will lead us towards a new era of climate neutrality”, reported the Guardian.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning this week, following over 16 hours of negotiations, an amended version of the plan was approved by environment ministers from the EU’s member states, with Germany saying that “a very broad majority”  had supported it. That compromise version must now be negotiated with the European Parliament.

Main image credit: Jacek Dylag/Unsplash

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.