According to German magazine Focus Online, Germany and France have agreed on the outlines of a joint plan to soften the EU’s ban on new combustion engine cars from 2035. Citing reports in the FAZ and Handelsblatt, Focus writes that the original goal – a 100 per cent share of zero-emission vehicles in new registrations – is to be lowered to 80 per cent, and that a new vehicle class is to be created for cars that run exclusively on renewable fuels. For the Power-to-X community, this is the most significant movement on the file since the e-fuels exemption was first promised in 2023.
A trade between Berlin and Paris
The EU member states have been split on the 2035 ban for months. Countries without a car industry of their own largely support it; Germany, Italy and several Eastern European states consider it a mistake. France, despite its own car industry, had so far sided with the supporters – not least to protect the battery investments of recent years. The negotiations have been running in the EU trilogue between Commission, Parliament and Council.
According to the Handelsblatt, as cited by Focus, the deal now on the table is a classic exchange: France adjusts its position on the combustion engine ban, and in return Germany shows flexibility on the “Made in EU” rules – criteria that would tie subsidies for electric cars to European production and, in effect, shield the European market more strongly from imports.
VEEF: a vehicle class for renewable fuels only
The precise implementation is still open. According to Focus Online’s own information, the core of the compromise is a new vehicle category called VEEF – “Vehicles Exclusively on Renewable Bio- and Synthetic E-Fuels”. From 2035, such cars would replace the classic combustion engine among new registrations: internal combustion engines that may only be run on renewable fuels, be they biofuels or synthetic e-fuels made from renewable energy with recycled CO₂. The most widely available renewable fuel today is HVO, the diesel substitute, which can already be bought at filling stations in Germany and Switzerland.
Powertrain expert Professor Thomas Koch of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) explains the logic to Focus. Under today’s fleet regulation, manufacturers can only improve the calculated carbon footprint of their sales by selling electric cars, which count as 0 g CO₂/km. Selling one combustion engine car at 120 g/km together with one battery-electric car yields a calculated fleet average of 60 g/km. A VEEF class would give renewable fuels a comparable regulatory standing – and, in Koch’s words, the urgently needed impulse to make such fuels available at scale. France and Spain had so far blocked the idea; given the majority required in the Council, one of the two had to move. The compromise now appears to make that possible.
The zero-emission fiction under pressure
Focus also points to a second driver of the debate: growing criticism of the EU rule that counts battery-electric cars as “zero emission vehicles”. A meta-study by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), itself contested by the electric car lobby and by some researchers, concluded that battery-electric cars cut CO₂ emissions by an average of 41 per cent compared with combustion engine cars – considerably better, but far from the 100 per cent the Commission credits them with. The TUM researchers’ point is a regulatory one: Regulation (EU) 2019/631 measures CO₂ only at the tailpipe. Fossil carbon released in the production of the car and through the electricity used to charge it, or lost in recycling, does not appear in the balance.
In practice, Focus expects the exemption to matter mostly for hybrids, with or without a plug. Classic petrol and diesel cars are losing favour with buyers anyway, while hybrids are still growing strongly alongside the electric boom and feature in long-term product plans. Under the original EU plan, they too would have disappeared from the showrooms after 2035.
The Power-to-X perspective: welcome, with two conditions
From SPIN’s perspective, the proposed VEEF class corrects a design flaw that we have criticised for years: a fleet regulation that measures only tailpipe emissions cannot distinguish between fossil petrol and a synthetic fuel made from renewable energy with recycled CO₂ from biogenic, atmospheric or industrial sources. A rule that counts the carbon in the fuel, not just the tailpipe, is the precondition for anyone to invest in Power-to-X plants at scale. Renewable fuels and electrification are not rivals; together they reduce cumulative CO₂ emissions faster than either on its own.
Two conditions matter, though. First, the carbon in the fuel must be recycled CO₂ that displaces fossil carbon, rather than a reason to extract more of it. Second, “exclusively” must actually be enforceable – and this is where the EU risks losing itself in complexity.
How do you prove “exclusively”? Switzerland already has a pragmatic answer
The discussion in Brussels about how to guarantee that a VEEF car is only ever filled with renewable fuel has so far produced ideas such as dedicated pumps, a chip in the car with digital fuel tracking, and similar technical safeguards. Every one of them requires new infrastructure, new measurement technology and years of standardisation – and every one of them makes the scheme more expensive and more fragile.
Switzerland has taken a far more pragmatic route in Article 11a of its CO₂ Act. An importer who places as much synthetic fuel on the market as a given vehicle will consume over its average lifetime mileage may count that vehicle as a zero-emission vehicle – 0 g CO₂/km, exactly like an electric car – in the calculation of its fleet emissions. No special pump, no chip, no checking what the driver actually fills up with: what counts is that the renewable fuel enters the market and displaces the fossil fuel the car would otherwise have burned. All that is needed is a formula for how much e-fuel covers the average lifetime mileage of a vehicle.
The climate does not care by which mechanism CO₂ emissions are reduced. It cares a great deal about how quickly. A rule like the Swiss one can be introduced immediately; a Europe-wide network of certified VEEF pumps cannot. The EU would do well to copy the Swiss approach rather than invent a new one.
Good law, flawed ordinance: what both sides can learn from each other
That does not mean Switzerland has got everything right. At the level of the law, the Swiss framework is very good. The problems sit one level down, in the implementing ordinance, where two parameters are off: the assumed lifetime mileage is around 10,000 kilometres too high, and the emission reduction factor – the share of fossil CO₂ that is treated as replaced by recycled CO₂ – is set too low. The lower that factor, the more e-fuel an importer has to place on the market per vehicle, and the more expensive the scheme becomes for the car industry. What Switzerland also still lacks is a multiplier for the crediting of synthetic fuels: a factor of two would be appropriate; Germany even applies a factor of three in its fuel-quota legislation.
So both sides can learn from each other. The EU would be well advised to adopt the Swiss law by analogy – the simple principle of counting the fuel placed on the market instead of policing the pump – but not to repeat the Swiss mistakes in the ordinance. Switzerland, in turn, could take the German multiplier as a benchmark for correcting its own ordinance. The direction is right, and the mechanism is simple. If the Berlin–Paris compromise adopts it, an 80 per cent electric fleet plus 20 per cent of cars running on renewable fuels would not be a weakening of climate policy – it would be a more honest accounting of it, and the market signal that Europe’s e-fuel projects have been waiting for.
Source: Sebastian Viehmann, “Verbrenner-Verbot könnte für Klimasprit-Autos wegfallen”, Focus Online, 8 October 2026, citing FAZ and Handelsblatt.
H2 Forum 2026 – 14 October, Konstanz
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🤖 AI transparency: This text and its visual were created using AI, reviewed and approved by a human.