De Rosa: "Brussels' blind transition"

For Cavaliere Domenico De Rosa , what is happening in Brussels increasingly resembles an exercise in distancing from reality. The decision to confirm the ban on the sale of internal combustion-engined cars starting in 2035, and even more so the proposal to force rental companies to focus exclusively on electric vehicles starting in 2030, represents an act of blind obstinacy. It's like asking a farmer to plow his field with a tractor that doesn't exist, but whose make and color have already been decided.

The data tell a different story: the market still favors hybrids and plug-ins , while vast areas of Southern Italy are virtually devoid of charging infrastructure. This situation, according to the Cavaliere, should prompt a profound rethink. But " there is none so deaf as he who will not hear, " he observes, " and in Europe, politics seems to bend reality to ideology, not adapt to it. When ideology becomes stronger than the economy, the result is inevitable: loss of competitiveness, industrial desertification, social impoverishment ."

Cavaliere De Rosa emphasizes how the Green Deal , born as a program of renewal and sustainability, has now been reduced to a harmful political manifesto, devoid of any practical sense, but capable of destroying in a few years what European industry has built over decades. This demonstrates how a project, when it loses touch with economic and social reality, becomes an ideological tool rather than a concrete solution.

Some countries, like Germany, have already expressed resistance. Yet the Cavaliere doesn't believe in sudden changes in direction. A course correction will come, yes, but not through political conviction: it will be the force of facts that imposes it. When demand collapses, when factories close and citizens are faced with an offer they can't afford, then someone will understand that a transition cannot be imposed like a religious dogma. But it will be too late, and the damage will already be irreversible.

The rental sector, which currently accounts for approximately 60% of car sales in Europe, is one of the few remaining lungs providing oxygen to the market. Forcing it to invest in a product customers don't want would mean putting it at risk and, with it, dragging down the entire supply chain. It's like depriving a patient who is already struggling to breathe.

Cavaliere De Rosa's recipe is clear: a pragmatic, gradual transition that doesn't bow to the myth of a one-size-fits-all solution. " Italy is not Norway, and Southern Italy is not Milan ," De Rosa reminds us, " and demanding uniformity is a strategic mistake. The future of the automotive industry must be a palette of options : electric, hybrid, synthetic fuels, hydrogen. Reducing it to a single color imposed from above is the premise of disaster ."

For the Knight, true sustainability is threefold: environmental, economic, and social. A market does not thrive on subsidies and taxes, but on free demand, real innovation, and competitiveness. Without these three conditions, 2035 will not be remembered as the beginning of a new era, but as the year Europe consciously decided to stop its engine.