The ban on the sale of new gas or diesel cars in the EU from 2035 “makes no sense” and the Italian government will work to “correct” it, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said today.
“Reducing polluting emissions is the path we want to follow, but with common sense,” Meloni said in a speech to the Italian parliament ahead of the EU leaders’ summit starting Thursday.
“The green perspective has been pursued even at the cost of sacrificing entire production and industrial sectors, such as the automotive industry,” Meloni added, criticizing the 2035 measure she said would “condemn [Europe] to new strategic dependencies, such as China’s electric [vehicles].”
“To argue otherwise was simply an ideological madness that we will work to correct,” Meloni said. Reducing pollution should not be done “at the expense of economic and social sustainability, [but] defending and promoting European production and safeguarding tens of thousands of jobs.”
She promised to “review the most ideological rules within the Green Deal and ensure technological neutrality.”
“No one has ever denied that electric [vehicles] can be part of the solution to decarbonize transport,” but “we want to protect nature with people in it,” she added, noting that “in recent years the opposite has happened and human activities have too often been considered harmful to nature.”
The 2035 ban was approved last year, but has become part of a blowback against green policies seen in this year’s EU election.
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