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Exhaust on a truck
Photo: Hendrik Schmidt / dpa
Shortly before the vote in the EU on the CO2 fleet limits for heavy commercial vehicles, the traffic light coalition managed to reach a common position. SPIEGEL learned this from government circles. A spokesman for the Federal Environment Ministry has now confirmed the agreement between the coalition partners.
The federal government supports the regulation in all points, it said. However, she is calling on the EU Commission to clarify how commercial vehicles can be operated with so-called e-fuels even after 2040. This should be included in the regulation as a so-called recital – a legally non-binding statement.
The FDP had previously surprisingly withdrawn its consent to the regulation at EU level. Observers in Brussels had therefore expected that the federal government would abstain from the vote and thus possibly overturn the entire regulation.
Immediately beforehand, a vote on the EU supply chain law had been postponed at the EU ambassadors' meeting on Friday. The EU countries' approval of what had already been negotiated was actually considered a formality, as the member states had already reached an agreement with Parliament and the EU Commission in mid-December. The federal government also agreed to the compromise.
However, FDP Justice Minister Marco Buschmann subsequently declared that he did not want to support the law - and underpinned this in a letter to his EU counterparts. That apparently worked: the Belgian Council Presidency took the vote off the agenda because, according to diplomats, a qualified majority was no longer certain.
The FDP is being heavily criticized for this by its partners in the traffic light coalition and even by the CDU and CSU. Observers assume that this could also have played a role in the FDP's decision not to torpedo the regulation on fleet limits for commercial vehicles.
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has invited people to make a statement at 3 p.m. He wants to give details of the agreement.