Six months ago, Brussels blinked on the most symbolic deadline in its climate playbook. The European Commission proposed scrapping the effective 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars and replacing it with a softer 90% emissions cut. At the time, the open question was whether member states would accept it. They have not settled the matter — and now the fight has moved somewhere harder to control: the European Parliament.
The original rule was blunt and, for a while, treated as untouchable: from 2035, every new car sold in the EU had to be zero-emission at the tailpipe. In December 2025 the Commission rewrote it. Instead of 100%, carmakers would have to cut CO2 by 90%, covering the last tenth with e-fuels, biofuels or low-carbon steel made inside the EU. In practice that keeps plug-in hybrids, range extenders, mild hybrids and even conventional engines alive well past the date meant to end them. The proposal also handed "super-credits" to small, affordable electric cars built in the EU, softened the 2030 target with an averaging mechanism, and eased the 2030 goal for vans.
The Commission called it technology neutrality and a lifeline for an industry losing ground to Chinese electric-vehicle makers. Its critics called it a climbdown. Either way, it was only a proposal — and under EU law a proposal is where the argument starts, not where it ends.
Since January, the file has been in the hands of the European Parliament and the Council, with the Cypriot Council presidency trying to broker a common line among governments. That is where the story has moved. In April 2026, the Parliament's rapporteur — the lawmaker steering the file — published a draft report proposing a series of further amendments, several of which would weaken the emissions target beyond what the Commission had already conceded. The central battle is over whether combustion cars running on e-fuels should be waved through after 2035 at all.
This is the pattern to watch. Each stage of the process has moved in one direction: from a hard ban, to a 90% cut, to a parliamentary draft that chips away further. Governments remain split between a German-led camp pushing for maximum flexibility and a group of southern and eastern states that want even more time. The rule that was supposed to be Europe's clearest industrial signal is now the bloc's most negotiable.
Clean-transport researchers argue the softening carries a real cost. Transport & Environment, the Brussels campaign group, says letting e-fuels and hybrids count toward the target blunts the incentive to go fully electric. The International Council on Clean Transportation, an independent research body, warns that the loopholes baked into the 90% figure could let real-world emissions run well above what the number implies. Carmakers and Berlin counter that a rigid deadline would strand factories and jobs before the EV market is ready — and that Europe cannot decarbonise an industry it has allowed to hollow out.
Hanging over all of it is a review clause: the EU has committed to reassess the rules again in 2026, which means even a final deal may not be final. For an industry that plans in decade-long cycles, that uncertainty is its own kind of cost.
The 2035 target was meant to be a fixed point that forced every carmaker, supplier and investor to commit to electric. Its slow unpicking — ban, to 90%, to a Parliament draft that wants less still — tells the market something more corrosive than any single concession: that Europe's green deadlines move when the economic pressure is high enough. That may hand European automakers breathing room against Chinese rivals. It also leaves every other climate target open to the same question. If 2035 can bend this far, what cannot? The answer will be written over the coming months in Strasbourg and in the Council — not in the headline number, but in how many exceptions survive the journey into law.
