The European Union must defend itself against the pressure of protectionist practices imposed on it by the United States and China. Saving European industry in the midst of a trade war has become one of the main headaches for European leaders, especially in the last two years, and the foundations have been laid to also try to reduce dependencies on other industries. powers, for example, in critical raw materials. With this panorama, the European Commission is preparing the tender for projects to promote the development of clean batteries for an amount of 1,000 million euros and plans to include clauses that preserve European competitors.
According to the Financial Timesthe European Commission intends to force Chinese companies that want to participate in battery development plans in Europe to share their technological know-how, that is, the intellectual property of their projects.
With this move, the EU would impose a kind of ‘mirror clause’ with respect to Chinese regulations, which forces foreign companies to the forced transfer of technology or the requirement to transfer certain intellectual property rights as a condition to be able to have access to the Chinese market. With this regime, Beijing has been accessing pioneering foreign technology in key industries for years.
The European Commission avoids commenting on the tender for the so-called 2024 Investment Fund, which will go out to tender on December 3. In addition to the 1,000 million allocated to clean batteries, there will also be a second auction of 1,200 million in aid for the production of renewable hydrogen.
Brussels also put a limit on the Asian giant’s participation in that procedure. The terms and conditions published in September stated that the selected projects would have to “contribute to a diversified supply chain and avoid the creation of dependencies in third countries that could threaten the security of supply of electrolyzers.”
Electrolyzers are the technology used to obtain hydrogen from the decomposition of water through renewable or nuclear electricity. Specifically, a limit of 25% of electrolyzer batteries from China was imposed, measured in electrical megawatts.
Research on wind turbines and tariffs on electric vehicles
On the retina of European governments is the dominance that China achieved over the solar panel industry thanks to its state aid, which took its toll on European companies in their own territory.
That is why one of the objectives of the European Commission is to put a stop to the Chinese flood in European markets and, especially, in the renewable energy sector at a time when the continent has ambitious objectives to achieve climate neutrality. Recently, the European Commission opened an investigation into Chinese suppliers of turbines for wind farms in Spain and four other EU countries.
The Vice President of Competition, Margrethe Vestager, who will now be succeeded by Teresa Ribera, accused the purchase of technology “not always in a transparent manner” and mentioned the granting of “massive subsidies to national suppliers while the national market is progressively closed to foreign companies” by Beijing. Likewise, he warned of exporting his excess capacity “to the rest of the world at low prices.”
These three examples add to the great decision to impose extraordinary tariffs on the import of electric vehicles manufactured in that country. The introduction of these rates, which range between 35.3% and 7.8% and are added to the current 10%, was carried out after an investigation announced by Ursula von der Leyen in September 2023 for government aid. Chinese to the automobile industry and an unsuccessful negotiation with Beijing, which tried to open a gap between the European capitals. Finally, the tariffs came to pass in a divided EU and in which economic interests in China often generate double standards by governments.
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