Denmark calls for the end of combustion engines

Ten European countries have joined a Danish unity-smashing strategy to ban combustion-engine sales in the European Union by 2030.

Denmark tabled the combustion-banning proposal to a meeting of EU Environment ministers as part of its plan to combat climate last week.

While the European Commission’s president, Ursula van der Leyen, announced plans to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050, Denmark argued the only way to do that was to ban combustion engines.

The northern nation has a reputation as the pushiest of Europe’s climate cleaners after announcing last year, then rescinding, a plan to ban all combustion cars by 2030.

Denmark was supported by Baltic neighbours Latvia and Lithuania and several other nations, including Slavic countries Slovenia and Bulgaria, which are swamped with outdated, higher-emitting second-hand cars from Western Europe.

The 27-state European Union’s plans call for a 40-percent drop in CO2 emissions by 2030, then a gradual decline to zero by 2050.

Denmark’s argument was that the transport sector, which includes shipping, aviation, trucking and cars, was the only major sector with increasing emissions.

"We need to acknowledge that we are in a bit of a hurry," Denmark’s Climate and Energy Minister, Dan Jorgensen, said.

Jorgensen’s new proposal, which seems frightening to carmakers, is to allow individual European countries to decide whether or not to ban petrol and diesel sales.

He said this strategy would pressure the European Commission to phase out combustion power even earlier than planned, and even if that failed there would be countries that did not use the fuels at all.