Cars, Urso insists in Strasbourg: “No ideological blinders, technology neutrality needed”

From the correspondent in Strasbourg – A series of high-level meetings to set Made in Italy priorities on the Brussels agenda to explain to Ursula von der Leyen’s commissioners the strategic documents with which Rome seeks to carve out a leading role in boosting European competitiveness. In his blitz today (Jan. 21) at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, met with two executive vice presidents of the EU Commission, Henna Virkkunen and Raffaele Fitto, Commissioners Andrius Kubilius and Olivér Várhelyi, and the President of the EU Parliament Roberta Metsola.

From the new frontiers of technology and industry, from artificial intelligence to chips and microelectronics, from the space and defence industry to pharmaceuticals: The dossiers in the minister’s briefcase were many, all sectors “on which the development and competitiveness of European industry are decided and on which Italy wants to have great importance because they are the sectors on which Made in Italy can be developed,” Urso said on the sidelines of the meetings. Six documents have already been submitted to other capitals or are on the home stretch: simplification, automotive, CBAM and the energy industry, chemical industry, updating policies on chips and microelectronics, and European space policy.

However, looking at the limp health of the European manufacturing industry, one sector in deep crisis stands out: automotive. The timing is decisive: in just over a week, on January 30, the strategic Automotive Dialogue promised by von der Leyen to address business concerns will begin. Ahead of that meeting, Urso reiterated to Virkkunen—as he had already done a few days ago in Rome with EU Executive Vice President for Industry, Stéphane Séjourné—the mainstays for Italy: the shift from 2026 to 2025 of the review of the EU’s regulation on CO2 emissions from motor vehicles, which requires a stop to endothermic engines by 2035, and the inclusion of biofuels in the list of clean alternatives, along with electric motor and synthetic fuels, in line with the principle of technology neutrality, “without ideological blinders.” On the possibility of bringing forward the legislative review by one year, the European Commission has so far closed the door.

“We think that technology neutrality is the statement that best corresponds to the principles and values on which the EU was founded, which unlike other political contexts—think of the Soviet Union—does not impose a technology but freedom in the use of any technology,” Urso made clear. As long as technologies “respect the overall goal of environmental sustainability.” On the European car crisis, already at the end of September, Italy presented, together with Germany, a non-paper (an informal document) to ask Brussels for a new European plan, with “common incentives and resources both on the technological investment front of companies and on the demand side,” the minister explained.

A plan made all the more urgent, according to Urso, in light of Donald Trump taking office in the White House, “which raises the bar for competitiveness in Europe and requires us to make a similar decision speed in reviewing the path of the Green deal,” and its transformation into what von der Leyen-bis has already renamed the “Clean industrial deal.” According to Urso, the Trump presidency in the U.S. “is a great opportunity for Europe,” forced by the tycoon’s aggressiveness to “respond with equal assertiveness and with extremely fast timescales to close the gap that has been realised with other continents.”