FEPS reaction to the European Commission’s Clean Industrial Deal

What Teresa Ribera presented today is an ambitious plan that makes the case for Europe as a hub for clean manufacturing and investment. In a difficult international context, the Clean Industrial Deal signals the EU’s commitment to investing in clean technology and set out a European economic model where competitiveness is based on affordable energy prices and a decarbonised industry.

Importantly, the EU is not backtracking from the climate goals and the 2040 target of 90% emissions reduction; rather, this ambition becomes a way to steer industrial renewal and accelerate gaining competitiveness.

As to be expected, more than a specific proposal, the Clean Industrial Deal sets out a plan for many measures that should all contribute to the goal of 1) ensuring a future for EU energy-intensive industries that are currently struggling with high and volatile energy costs and strong global competition; 2) boosting clean technologies as a vehicle for future economic prosperity (read: industrial transformation, circularity, decarbonisation innovation and competitiveness).

Among the measures proposed some are of particular relevance. For instance the Affordable Energy Action Plan that, among other things, is meant to acellerate the rollout of renewable energy by cutting permitting time for energy projects and by promoting interconnecting infrastructure. The Union of Skills will also be extremely relevant to ensure that the Quality Jobs Roadmap is not an empty promise and that there will be support for workers and regions in transition.

We are particularly happy to see the intention to bring about “actions to scale down and phase out fossil fuel subsidies” starting from this year European Semester process. Also very positive is the plan to modernise the Public Procurement Framework by introducing sustainability criteria and a European preference criteria in order to boost the demand of European clean products. 

Of course, a Plan without money would have hardly been taken seriously. As we are by now used to seeing, the Commission is looking in all possible directions to provide a financial arm to a new strategy. In this case, the objective is to make some capital immediately accessible for EU clean manufacturing, even before the new Multiannual Financial Framework kicks in. The Commission will move in three directions: 1) more EU-level funding with over €100bn made available for industrial transformation also with means of the current MFF, 2) leverage private investments with new initiatives of the EIB, a revision of InvestEU and an Industrial Decarbonisation Bank, 3) revise state aid rules to accelerate on national financing for renewable energy and industrial decarbonisation efforts.

Possibly, a focus on energy efficiency and a reflection on the territorial dimension of the Clean Industrial Deal would have made this strategy even more sound, but after weeks of worry in which we thought that competitiveness would only mean de-regulation and retracting from the EU Green Deal, it is quite refreshing and reassuring to see that the EU model for the economic relaunch of our industry is based on social-democratic values: investment in clean technologies, boosting European productive capacity, affordable and renewable energy, the regulatory predictability of democratic stability, accompanying industrial change with coherent policies for high standards in education, social, employment matters.

An Analysis by David Rinaldi, Director of Studies and Policy; Chloé Deffet, Policy Analyst on Climate and Environment and Anna Kolesnichenko, Policy Analyst on Economy.