The EU’s announcement on Wednesday that it will ban the sale of new fossil fuel cars bloc-wide by 2035 has been slammed by a populist MEP, who has argued it will cause “suffering” for “hundreds of thousands”.
A ban on new fossil fuel cars due to come into force by 2035 across the EU has been lambasted by a populist elected representative within the European parliament, who has argued that it will harm “hundreds of thousands of workers ” while making the bloc even more reliant on “autocratically led” regimes.
Dr. Sylvia Limmer, the environment spokesman for the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party’s delegation within the European Parliament, also expressed concern that the agreed ban will come up against the hard reality of material shortages.
“The car as we know it is history with [Wednesday’s] vote in the EU Parliament,” Dr. Limmer said in a statement on the agreed ban given by AfD to Breitbart Europe.
“Suffering will be hundreds of thousands of workers who will lose their jobs in the coming years due to Brussels’ ‘green deal’ hysteria and alleged saving of the world,” she continued.
“The lie of alleged ’emission-free mobility’ with battery cars will drive many families, especially in the supplier industry, into existential distress. Customers will have to prepare themselves for dangerous, unreliable, poorly performing and expensive e-cars.”
The AfD MEP also claimed that the combustion engine ban for cars would see the likes of America and China gain a competitive edge over European manufacturers, further deepening the bloc’s reliance on external powers.
“Instead of [Germany] building the world’s best combustion engines ourselves together with other European countries, we will soon be allowed to buy batteries from the Far East and microchips from America,” Dr. Limmer claimed. “The fact that this will massively increase technological dependencies on autocratically led countries like China is not a problem [for the EU]. The fact that we cannot afford the electricity for a car fleet on today’s scale and will therefore drive fewer and fewer cars — a trifle for green climate fanatics.”
The 2035 ban on the sale of new carbon-emitting cars agreed by the EU’s 27 member states on Wednesday is only one of many major climate crazy measures passed by the bloc in recent weeks, with the union’s “Fit for 55” project — which aims to see the union cut its emissions by 55 per cent — driving Eurocrats to adopt ever more radical policies to curb carbon output.
These measures are being adopted at a time of extreme energy instability for the entire European continent, however, with hostilities between the West and Russia resulted in Moscow either partially or fully cutting off EU states from Russian gas exports.
This has resulted in significant economic and social fears throughout the union, with Germany, in particular, being plunged into a “gas crisis” as a result of the Kremlin turning down the tap.
To make matters worse, the country’s climate and economic minister, Robert Habeck, is now afraid that Russia may stop supplying the country completely on July 11, a move that would almost instantly push Germany into a severe recession.
According to Habeck, this date is when annual maintenance on the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany begins, a process that will require the entire system to be shut down for a period of ten days.
This maintenance period could, the minister argues, be used by Vladimir Putin and his allies as an excuse to end the supply of gas indefinitely using the excuse that there is some fault with the pipe.
“And then you say: Yes, we can’t turn it on again, now we found something during maintenance and that’s it,” Habeck said.