‘We are losing debates’: combustion engine row divides Germany’s coalition

FDP politicians argue that the phase-out in its current form risks destroying a German manufacturing industry that could in the future offer viable climate-neutral fuels as an alternative to purely battery-powered electric vehicles.

In a television interview on Tuesday night, the minister for economic affairs and climate action also accused the FDP and his senior coalition partner, the Social Democratic party (SPD) of chancellor Olaf Scholz, of deliberately leaking an early draft of a law banning new fossil fuel heaters in Germany from 2025.

In the coalition agreement in December 2021, the three parties had agreed to a ban on installing of new fossil fuel heaters from 2024, with only devices running on 65% renewable energy allowed going forward. With the war in Ukraine bringing a collapse in gas deliveries, that target was supposed to be moved forward, to the start of 2024.

The FDP and the Greens are both struggling in the polls, with the ecological party currently close to the worse-than-anticipated 15% it achieved at federal elections in September 2021. The liberals, meanwhile, are hovering just above the 5% threshold for entering parliament and have lost votes in a string of regional and state elections.