Auto bonus, because some environmental associations have resorted to

Car incentives for polluting vehicles are at the heart of a appeal presented to the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Lazio of the major Italian environmental associations. Legambiente, Wwf Italia, Greenpeace Italia, Kyoto Club, Citizens for the air and Transport & Environment have lined up against the economic support given by the state for the purchase of cars with combustion enginesthrough the so-called car bonus, contained in the decree of 6 April 2022.

In the sights of the associations the fact that the auto bonuses they also cover vehicles with combustion engines, which instead for the NGOs should be abandoned as soon as possible. From 2020 to date, the various governments have spent around 3 billion euros for support the purchase of new cars, yet, according to the complainants’ calculations, a unique case in Europe, most of these public funds went to cars with endothermic engines, with emissions up to 135 grams of CO₂ per kilometer. For NGOs, in no other European country has been funded with internal combustion engine carswith the exception of Romania which is still doing better than Italy, given that the incentives stop at 120 grams of CO₂ per kilometer.

According to the plaintiffs this strategy helped make Italy the European country with the lowest number of electric vehicles in Europeequal only to8% of the market against 20% of the community average. Moreover, NGOs say, this approach has not even managed to support the market for traditional vehicles, with 34% fewer cars sold than in 2019.

To make a comparison, too Germany has allocated 3 billion in incentives for the purchase of new vehiclesi, but only for fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars. In this context, two-thirds of new vehicles were purchased by businesses and rental or sharing companies, without putting families into debt, while the opposite happened with us. Now, 660,000 electric cars and 550,000 plug-ins are on the streets of Germany. In Italy, on the other hand, 150,000 electric and 155,000 plug-ins, that is four times less. We have therefore spent as much as in Germany (which has 80 million inhabitants) but used far fewer ecological vehicles. From an economic, social and environmental point of view it is a complete failurethe associations pointed out.

Therefore, the request made to the government through the appeal presented to the TAR, is that of ending any incentives for the purchase of cars with combustion enginesto favor interventions in support of industrial conversion towards electric mobility and investments in sustainable zero-emission mobility infrastructures, the only ones able to guarantee social and environmental sustainability in the shortest possible time.