On Wednesday 4 March, the presentation of the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) was eagerly awaited and widely commented on. In the European Parliament, the Greens/EFA group welcomed a “vital” proposal for EU industry, but the ‘Made in Europe’ proposed by the Commission “won’t be up to the challenges”, according to Belgian MEP Saskia Bricmont.
“The Commission has bowed to pressure from German Chancellor Merz and has terribly weakened the notion of ‘Made in Europe’, which was supposed to support European production: products from countries such as the United States, Vietnam or Taiwan will benefit from the same advantages as ‘Made in Europe’. It’s totally absurd”, said the MEP.
“This proposal, long advocated by the EPP Group, marks an important step for Europe’s industrial future”, stressed the Spanish EPP member Raúl De La Hoz Quintano.
“Europe has the talent, the technology and the industrial strength. We must now act to provide the right framework so that businesses choose to grow, create jobs and manufacture here in Europe”, he stressed.
But for Christian Ehler, the EPP Group spokesman and coordinator for industry “there aren’t easy pretend solutions to such complex problems. Put more concretely, a protectionist economic policy is not a solution to our structural problems”. However, “the Industrial Accelerator Act is an important part of the puzzle. Lead markets for green and European products can be important to help innovative sectors scale, and clearly defined conditionalities on foreign investment in strategic sectors will help rectify the market access inequalities that European companies face globally”, he concluded.
Steel. The IAA paves the way for pilot markets “but more is needed to support green steel ‘Made in Europe’”, said EUROFER, representing the EU steel industry.
The aim of this legislation is “to create lead markets for low-carbon materials in sectors such as clean energy, mobility and infrastructure - an important step to help scale up new industrial technologies”.
But while this proposal provides an encouraging basis for stimulating demand for low-carbon steel, “the demand signal remains limited”.
EUROFER regrets that the proposal does not require this steel to be produced in Europe.
For Eurochambres, the EU’s chambers of commerce, “the slowness and complexity of authorisation procedures remain a major brake on industrial investment in Europe. The proposal for a single digital authorisation procedure responds to long-standing demands from the business community. However, it unfortunately limits the mechanisms relating to overriding public interest and tacit approval to decarbonisation projects and industrial acceleration zones. This is a missed opportunity to simplify”.
Eurochambres is also calling for clarification on the ‘Made in Europe’ criterion in public procurement, raising questions about “costs, burdensome requirements for SMEs and international trade rules”.
For BusinessEurope, the text “comes at a crucial time, with many industries feeling the strain of a deficit in the competitiveness of Europe’s economy and aggressive industrial strategies and economic coercion used by certain third countries”, but while “the proposal can bring solutions, it can also create new problems if it is not well balanced and carefully designed”.
Despite efforts to narrow their scope, “the provisions on Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) remain problematic. They raise legitimate questions about the consistency of this proposal with the newly adopted FDI screening regulation and could put Europe’s attractiveness for foreign direct investment into question”.
For the European Trade Union Confederation, the IAA is an important milestone. “A larger proportion of the €2,000 billion spent each year on public procurement in the EU must benefit European companies. However, the award of public contracts must be conditional on the creation of quality jobs and compliance with social conditions by the companies concerned”.
Paris unenthusiastic. The French Ministers for Industry and the Economy and Finance, Sébastien Martin and Roland Lescure, were rather lukewarm. “The introduction of European preference in strategic industrial sectors is a major breakthrough, supported by France (...). However, this is only the first step, because it is not enough”. The advantages given to those who produce in Europe “must be clearly reinforced. Together with our European counterparts, we will be fighting to strengthen the text and meet the expectations of our manufacturers and employees”. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)