For Cavaliere De Rosa, what is happening in Brussels increasingly resembles an exercise detached from reality.

The decision to confirm the ban on the sale of internal combustion engine cars starting in 2035—and, even more so, the proposal to require rental companies to switch exclusively to electric vehicles as early as 2030—constitutes an act of blind obstinacy. It’s like asking a farmer to plow a field with a tractor that doesn’t exist, but for which the make and color have already been decided.

The data tells a different story: the market still prefers hybrids and plug-in hybrids, while vast areas of southern Italy are virtually devoid of charging infrastructure. A context that, according to Cavaliere De Rosa, should prompt a profound rethink. But “there is none so deaf as those who will not hear,” he observes, “and in Europe, politics seems to bend reality to ideology rather than adapt to it. When ideology becomes stronger than the economy, the result is inevitable: loss of competitiveness, industrial desertification, and social impoverishment.”

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

Some countries, such as Germany, have already voiced their opposition. Yet Berlusconi does not believe in sudden course corrections. A course correction will come, yes, but not out of political conviction: it will be the force of facts that imposes it. When demand collapses, when factories close, and citizens find themselves faced with a supply they cannot afford, then someone will realize that a transition cannot be imposed like a religious dogma. But it will be too late, and the damage will already be irreversible.

The leasing sector, which today accounts for about 60% of car sales in Europe, is one of the few lungs still supplying oxygen to the market. Forcing it to invest in a product that customers don’t want would mean putting it in distress and, with it, dragging the entire supply chain down. It’s like taking oxygen away from a patient who is already struggling to breathe.

Cavaliere De Rosa’s prescription is clear: a pragmatic, gradual transition that does not bow to the myth of a one-size-fits-all solution. “Italy is not Norway, and Southern Italy is not Milan,” he points out, “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 a recipe for disaster.”

For the Cavaliere, true sustainability has three dimensions: environmental, economic, and social. A market does not thrive on subsidies and mandates, but on free demand, genuine innovation, and competitiveness. Without these three conditions, 2035 will not be remembered as the dawn of a new era, but as the year Europe knowingly decided to shut down its own engine.