What Stellantis leaving EU lobby group means for car industry

We’re promised just “facts, transparency and respect” from all participants and attendants, which could mean, interpreted using the double-speak translator applied to company-funded pressure groups, that things could get rowdy.

The lofty ambition could be to create an automotive equivalent of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the organisation backed by global corporations that meets for its biggest event once a year in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF’s aim is to influence global trade and legislation by getting big names to say newsworthy things that will get heard by governments. Stellantis will be hoping the Freedom of Mobility Forum’s views will be amplified loud enough to be heard by the European Commission.

Stellantis’s timing was interesting in that it came directly after the European Parliament’s decision in early June to aim for a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2035. The decision, according to many car companies and automotive lobby groups, such as ACEA, goes too far in effectively banning ICE cars.

That was certainly the view of ACEA. “Given the volatility and uncertainty we're experiencing globally day-by-day, any long-term regulation going beyond this decade is premature at this early stage,” ACEA chairman and BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said in a statement.

ACEA is calling for a review halfway between now and 2035 to look at the targets again.

However, ACEA’s unity was undermined by separate statements from the Volkswagen Group and Mercedes-Benz, both of which supported the 2035 cut, with the caveat that charging infrastructure must be in place first.

The Volkswagen Group remains a key member of ACEA, but the amount that it spends lobbying the European Commission far outstrips that of ACEA itself, with the German company shelling out between €3m (£2.6m) and €3.25m (£2.79m) in 2020, according to LobbyFactsEU.

Tavares himself will know exactly how effective ACEA’s lobbying is, given that he was president of the organisation between 2018 and 2019, which doesn’t bode well if he’s now shutting the door on it at this crucial time.

ACEA’s clout has almost certainly been diminished by the Dieselgate scandal of 2015, which heightened politicians’ distrust of the car industry following Volkswagen's admission that it had cheated on emissions tests and the subsequent uncovering of similar schemes across the industry.

ACEA was created in 1991, due to divisions within its predecessor organisation, the CCMC (Comité des Constructeurs du Marché Commun), that prevented the organisation from having a strong voice.

The strongest voices these days come from automotive supplier organisations like CLEPA (standing for, deep breath: Comité de Liaison Européen des Fabricants d'Equipements et de Pièces Automobiles), which can really shout about the damage that they believe electrification will do to their businesses, because they aren’t consumer-facing.

“With this [2035] vote, we risk a considerable relocation of the automotive industry,” stated Sigrid de Vries, CLEPA’s outgoing secretary general (and new head of ACEA). “It means limiting consumer choice, stifling innovation and losing our competitive edge.”

The CCMC failed because it couldn’t agree on a common message for the industry issue of the day: allowing the Japanese wider access to the single market. One of those in strongest opposition was Jacques Calvet, CEO of Stellantis’ predecessor company, PSA. It would be quite a thing if Stellantis’s breakaway forum became the catalyst for the end of ACEA, too.