Car suppliers urge EU to boost production
The European Automobile Suppliers Association (CLEPA) is calling on the EU to boost domestic production ahead of an important EU Council meeting to be held this week, Kallanish reports.
Since the negotiations are in advance, the CLEPA is calling on the European Parliament and the Council to fix the commission a clear definition of what qualifies as "European vehicles" to protect industrial value, services, including critical technologies, from unfair competition and reduce pressure on offshore manufacturing jobs.
"Europe urgently needs a reliable framework to stimulate production in Europe in accordance with the Industrial Acceleration Act (IAA)", the association adds.
Currently, 75% of the parts in European-made cars are manufactured locally, as confirmed by a recent Roland Berger study.
"In other words, vehicle components account for the largest share of value creation, jobs, and investment in Europe's automotive ecosystem. A methodology that expands the calculation base while keeping the threshold unchanged means a much lower incentive to source and manufacture components in Europe, potentially leading to greater delocalization of production," it says.
Imports of automotive components from China to the EU reached 8.2 billion euros ($9.4 billion) in 2025, which in just five years led to a rebalancing of EU bilateral trade in the sector from a surplus of almost 7 billion euros to a deficit of 0.7 billion euros.
The stakes for the European automotive industry are exceptionally high: without fair competition, the EU risks losing up to 350,000 jobs by 2030 and a significant portion of its production capacity, which will also negatively affect its strategic autonomy, CLEPA warns.
"To prevent this scenario and secure Europe's future as a manufacturing and innovation hub, the IAA must embrace the automotive components market and close loopholes allowing for cheap and heavily subsidized imports from non-EU countries," it says. "In addition, we call for the establishment of thresholds for foreign direct investment in the battery and electric vehicle value chains to ensure genuine supply chain sustainability. This should be combined with strengthening genuine industrial cooperation with reliable trading partners such as the UK and EFTA countries through a focused risk-based approach that prevents circumvention of trade rules."
The IAA is not a "golden mean", but