Defueling the impasse: EU political discourse on e-fuels

As part of its ‘Fit for 55’ package, the European Commission proposed to ban internal combustion engines in new cars and vans from 2035 onwards. Although initially agreed upon by the Parliament and Council of Ministers, Germany rejected the law last-minute due to its exclusion of e-fuels, leading to a three-week long impasse until a compromise was found. This study aims to explain how this impasse could occur by analysing the political discourse on e-fuels. A qualitative, inductive framing analysis is applied to 77 communications published by 15 stakeholders at five key dates during the legislative procedure. This revealed the different usage of positional and argumentative frames among stakeholders, and the importance of adding the e-fuels recital 9a to the Council’s General Approach. Both a change of mood in the discourse and discrepancies in interpretations of the recital were identified in the stakeholder communications after the Council’s General Approach, signalling towards a potential impasse. Although recitals are commonly used in EU policy making to find compromises, the recital made negotiations more difficult in this case. Understanding how this impasse could occur so suddenly at the end of the procedure can aid in predicting and preventing similar conflicts in the future. •We examine the 2023 impasse on the EU proposal to ban internal combustion engines.•Framing analysis highlights the key role of including an e-fuels recital in the bill.•Adding the recital changed the tone in both supporting and opposing discourses.•The inclusion of the recital gave rise to misinterpretations about its meaning.•The impasse can be explained by Germany’s misconceptions about the recital.