EU agrees to ban sale of petrol and diesel cars with Poland only member state opposed

The European Union has agreed to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 despite opposition from Poland, which was the only member state to vote against the proposal when it was approved at a summit of energy and transport ministers in Brussels today.

As recently as yesterday, Poland’s climate minister, Anna Moskwa, had declared that her government “will block this document together with other countries”, though she did not name who they were.

However, in today’s vote, Bulgaria, Romania and Italy abstained while Germany – which had previously opposed the ban but last week reached an agreement with the European Commission to allow the use of CO2-neutral e-fuels – voted in favour.

Poland, which has been a strong opponent of the idea since its conception, remained a holdout, with Moskwa describing the timeline for the plans as “unrealistic” and “too ambitious”. After today’s vote, she criticised the decision and the process by which it had been reached but expressed hope it could still be amended.

“Non-transparent and informal discussions where Germany pushes for solutions that mainly benefit its market shows that this has nothing to do with a fair transition,” tweeted Moskwa.

“A revision of the regulation on banning the registration of new combustion cars is planned for 2026. I am confident that by then the EU will understand the absurdity of this decision and plans in this regard will be revised,” she added.

Poland has one of the EU’s lowest levels of uptake of electric cars. The latest EU-wide data, for 2021, showed that 3.6% of new cars in Poland were fully electric or hybrid, with only the Czech Republic (3.2%), Slovakia (2.1%) and Cyprus (0.8%) having lower proportions.

When hybrids are excluded, Poland’s proportion of 1.2% for electric-only vehicles was the second lowest, ahead of only Cyprus (0.5%). As of the end of February this year Poland, a country of 38 million, still had only 66,685 electric cars registered and less than 3,000 charging stations.

The Polish government promised in 2016 that by 2025 there would be one million electric vehicles on Polish roads. But 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.

Some individual Polish cities have moved ahead with introducing “clean transport zones” of their own. Kraków, the first to do so, will from next year begin banning older vehicles from its roads. Warsaw, the capital, recently adopted similar plans.

Main image credit:  Janusz Walczak/Pixabay

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.