[gawa]

To add more context: German car manufacturers have a bigger market share in China (especially compared to other Europeans brands). They depend on China, especially VW which invest a lot there. China already threatens to retaliate with punitive tariff (or organize a boycott as it's easy to leverage nationalism there, something like "buy Chinese, not European!") in case the European Comission does something to defend its industry against the anti-competitive dumping practices that China may use (the same tactic China used to obliterate the EU and US solar panel industries). This is why Germany is officially against the probe [0] investigating the subsidies China may have given chinese manufacturers (mainly BYD) [1], and thus why Germany may not be so (publicly) in favor of this EV passport.

[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2023/7545...

[1] https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/10/18/german-minister-warns-...