German Court Rejects Bid to Ban Mercedes and BMW’s Fossil-Fuel Cars

Environmentalists suffered a setback on Monday when Germany’s top appeals court threw out their cases seeking to ban Mercedes-Benz and BMW from selling new combustion-engine cars from November 2030.

• The federal court of justice in Karlsruhe upheld lower court rulings against the lawsuits, brought by three managing directors from the DUH environmental lobby
• The DUH had based its case on a “carbon budget” calculated for each of the two automakers
• But the court ruled that no such budget had been allocated to individual companies
• Both Mercedes-Benz and BMW welcomed the ruling while stressing their commitment to sustainability
• The decision provides “legal certainty for companies operating in Germany,” a BMW spokesperson said.

(Reporting by Ursula Knapp and Rachel More, editing by Thomas Seythal)