BRUSSELS -- Lawmakers on the European Parliament's environment committee backed an EU plan to effectively ban new gasoline and diesel car sales from 2035, while voting against proposals for tougher targets to cut car CO2 emissions within this decade.
The committee supported the proposal for a 100 percent cut in CO2 emissions by 2035, which would make it impossible to sell new fossil fuel-powered vehicles in the 27-country bloc.
The European Commission proposed the targets as part of a bigger package of climate change policies last July, on the basis that new cars stay on the roads for 10 to 15 years -- meaning that 2035 is the latest date that sales of polluting cars could halt, without jeopardizing the bloc's plan to have net zero emissions in all sectors by 2050.