EU corporate EV tax gaps reflect fossil-fuel subsidy lock-in, T&E warns – systemic reform needed to break dependency
Original framing: “Most EU countries lack strong tax incentives for company electric cars, T&E says - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The EU’s automotive dominance traces back to post-WWII industrial policy and the Marshall Plan’s support for German and French car manufacturers, which entrenched fossil-fuel infrastructure. The 1973 oil crisis solidified this path dependency, while the 1990s neoliberal deregulation allowed automakers to externalize environmental costs. Today, the lack of EV incentives mirrors the delayed adoption of catalytic converters in the 1980s, when industry lobbied against regulation until forced by lawsuits and public pressure.
The EU’s failure to incentivize corporate EVs is not a policy oversight but a symptom of deeper structural pathologies: a fossil-fuel subsidy regime that dates back to the Marshall Plan, a neoliberal regulatory framework that privileges corporate mobility over public good, and a colonial supply chain that externalizes harm to the Global South and marginalized communities.
T&E’s data exposes this system, but its market-based framing obscures the need for radical reimagining—one that centers Indigenous reciprocity, circular economies, and energy democracy. The solution pathways outlined above reveal that the transition to electric mobility must be inseparable from decolonization, degrowth, and democratic control of technology. Without these shifts, the EU’s 'green' cars will remain a Trojan horse for the same extractive logics that created the climate crisis. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the system cannot be fixed by its own tools; it must be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.