Uber calls for EU combustion engine ban to be brought forward

Good morning. News to start: European embassies in London are lobbying the UK government to exempt international schools from the incoming 20 per cent VAT charge on private education, arguing that British independent schools on the continent aren’t similarly taxed.

Today, our competition and energy correspondents hear arguments for and against an EU combustion engine ban from Uber and Italy. And our Rome team reports on an initiative to make Italian citizenship more easily accessible.

Car crash

Uber has called on the EU to partially advance its 2035 combustion engine ban, one day ahead of a crucial EU industry ministers meeting where the topic is sure to surface, write Javier Espinoza and Alice Hancock.

To speed up electrification, Anabel Díaz, head of Uber’s mobility division in Europe, urged Brussels to set more aggressive targets for the take-up of electric vehicles.

Context: Other players in the car industry have called for a delay to the landmark ban on new combustion engines from 2035, amid falling sales of vehicles and a slow uptake of expensive electric cars.

Pressure is also mounting among car manufacturing countries such as Italy, where Rome’s industry minister Adolfo Urso has called for an early review of the ban ahead of a meeting with his colleagues in Brussels tomorrow.

But according to Uber, the European Commission should set “more aggressive binding targets” to electrify corporate fleets, including ride hailing platforms such as Uber’s, Díaz told the FT.

New combustion engines should be banned for business customers from 2030, she said, and corporate fleets should be “100 per cent electric cars by 2035 at the latest”.

Uber’s call sets it in opposition to car manufacturers who have complained that stricter emissions targets coming into force next year will cost them billions of euros in fines.

The commission is currently considering additional measures to green corporate cars, which account for around 60 per cent of the EU’s total fleet, and had asked companies for input.

Diaz said a move to full electric fleets “liberates the environmental benefits of electrification where they are most impactful, because of the high utilisation rate of the corporate fleets”.

She added that electrifying corporate cars would “pave the way for the broader mass transition to electric personal vehicles”.

Chart du jour: How to grow

More interventionist trade and industrial policies lie at the core of the EU’s competitiveness challenge. Intervening effectively is another matter, writes Martin Wolf.

Papers please

More than 500,000 Italians have signed a petition asking to ease the country’s restrictive citizenship rules — the first step in a process that could lead to a national referendum on the issue, write Amy Kazmin and Giuliana Ricozzi.

Context: Italians have been fiercely debating the path to citizenship for children who were born in Italy to immigrant parents and who are considered “foreigners” despite having been brought up and educated in the country.

Italy’s current citizenship law, which was adopted in 1992, requires immigrants to live in the country legally for at least a decade to be eligible to apply for citizenship.

Members of the small centrist party Più Europa (More Europe) now want to hold a national referendum on restoring an older set of rules, which previously allowed foreigners to apply for Italian citizenship after just five years of legal residence.

The petition yesterday achieved the 500,000 signatures required for a review by the constitutional court, who will now scrutinise the proposed referendum to determine whether it can go ahead.

“Citizens have shown that when parliament cannot find the courage to change unjust laws, they can mobilise and do it themselves,” Più Europa wrote in a post on X. “Those who chose Italy to live, study, love and grow up, who imagine their future in our country, are Italian.”

The fate of this dream — and an estimated 2.5mn people, including adults and children, who could be allowed to apply for citizenship immediately with such a change — now lies in the hands of 15 constitutional court judges.

What to watch today

1. French President Emmanuel Macron to visit Canada

2. EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell participates in a G20 foreign affairs ministers meeting in New York.

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