Source: European Parliament

The European Parliament,

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 26 February 2025 entitled ‘The Clean Industrial Deal: A joint roadmap for competitiveness and decarbonisation’ (COM(2025)0085),

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 26 February 2025 entitled ‘Action Plan for Affordable Energy – Unlocking the true value of our Energy Union to secure affordable, efficient and clean energy for all Europeans’ (COM(2025)0079),

–  having regard to the report of 9 September 2024 by Mario Draghi entitled ‘On the future of European competitiveness’,

–  having regard to the report of April 2024 by Enrico Letta entitled ‘Much more than a market’,

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 29 January 2025 entitled ‘A Competitiveness Compass for the EU’ (COM(2025)0030),

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 19 March 2025 entitled ‘A European Steel and Metals Action Plan’ (COM(2025)0125),

–  having regard to its resolution of 15 September 2022 on the implementation of the Updated New Industrial Strategy for Europe: aligning spending to policy(1),

–  having regard to its resolution of 3 April 2025 on energy-intensive industries(2) and the related oral question O-00010/2025,

–  having regard to the Commission communication of 11 December 2019 on the European Green Deal (COM(2019)0640),

–  having regard to the report of its Committee on Industry, Research and Energy of 13 May 2025 on electricity grids: the backbone of the EU energy system,

–  having regard to the question to the Commission O-000020/2025,

–  having regard to Rules 142(5) and 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

–  having regard to the motion for a resolution of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy,

A.  whereas the Clean Industrial Deal (CID) aims to bring together climate action and competitiveness under one overarching growth strategy focusing on supporting energy-intensive industries and the clean tech sector; whereas this is much needed, as the transition to a decarbonised and circular economy can only be successful when competitiveness is maintained;

B.  whereas the Action Plan for Affordable Energy aims to provide affordable clean energy and short-term relief by lowering energy bills while accelerating the implementation of structural reforms and strengthening our energy systems to mitigate future price shocks;

C.  whereas European industry is currently facing enormous challenges with high fossil-based energy prices, unfair international competition, lost jobs and skills shortages, leading to scaled-back production, delocalisation and closed sites, thereby increasing our dependency on external suppliers and undermining strategic autonomy, while innovation, manufacturing and associated emissions risk being relocated rather than addressed at source;

D.  whereas European industry is willing to move towards sustainability, contributing to achieving climate neutrality by 2050, and a future-proof, decarbonised industrial base can offer significant opportunities, but decarbonisation projects risk being shelved because their business case within Europe no longer adds up;

1.  Welcomes the Clean Industrial Deal as a long-awaited first step towards strengthening Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovation, strategic autonomy, decarbonisation, prosperity and clean growth; urges the Commission to swiftly move from strategy to action and implementation; recognises that the proposed actions must be expanded with further measures; stresses that robust and well-targeted industrial policy is crucial to ensure a strong and sustainable industrial base in Europe and to create and maintain high-quality jobs while decarbonising our economy, reducing pollution and strengthening Europe’s resilience;

2.  Welcomes the establishment of the Industrial Decarbonisation Bank with the aim of mobilising EUR 100 billion in funding, as well as the announced pilot with a EUR 1 billion auction on the decarbonisation of key industrial processes across various sectors supporting industrial decarbonisation and electrification; emphasises the importance of scaling up investment in and access to capital for clean tech manufacturing, including via additional funding through the Innovation Fund; calls for broader participation by the Member States in auction-as-a-service schemes; calls for the adoption of investment criteria based on carbon impact, scalability and security of supply; supports Carbon Contracts for Difference in closing the gap between the carbon price and the cost of industrial carbon management projects for hard-to-abate sectors; considers its establishment as a budget line for deployment of industrial decarbonisation technologies within the governance of the Competitiveness Fund;

3.  Supports the Action Plan for Affordable Energy and its focus on the implementation of the Electricity Market Design, enhancing tools such as Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) and two-way Contracts for Difference (CfDs) to reduce the influence of fossil fuel prices on electricity prices; welcomes the pilot programme for corporate PPAs via the European Investment Bank and stresses the need to leverage PPAs to expand capacity and achieve genuine decarbonisation; calls on the Commission to introduce de-risking tools to address the main barriers that energy-intensive industries face in signing PPAs, in particular renewable PPAs, as well as CfDs for risk reduction on the demand side for energy users, and to explore how to stimulate the development of hybrid PPAs with matching flexibility products;

4.  Underlines the need to boost energy infrastructure, especially cross-border, including interconnections, and to complete the Energy Union; calls for the pursuit of an ambitious outcome of the future dialogue on deeper electricity market integration, as the current fragmentation of regulatory oversight and investment planning across all Member States is hampering integration and electrification; calls on the Member States, transmission system operators and the Commission to boost cross-border electricity trading so as to unlock the benefits of market integration and improve reliability of supply for all interconnected parties; urges the Member States to strive to achieve the current 15 % interconnection target, as set out in Regulation (EU) 2018/1999(3);

5.  Highlights the need to finalise work on the revision of the Energy Taxation Directive(4), which aims to align the taxation of energy products with the EU’s energy and climate policy objectives, and to harmonise a design of tariff methodologies for network charges, provided that such measures do not come at the expense of final consumers; calls on the Member States to urgently provide short-term relief to industry and households, for example by reducing electricity taxes and levies and abstaining from unjustified additional requirements (‘gold-plating’ EU legislation) where this distorts the level playing field;

6.  Encourages the Commission and the Member States to improve the coordination of state aid spending on common European industrial priorities and calls on the Member States to make use of this to support industry on the path towards a clean transition, while taking into account different fiscal capacities; reiterates the need for a level playing field; stresses the need for improved coordination of industrial policy across the Union, both among the Member States and between the Member States and the Commission; supports the deployment of the competitiveness coordination tool to guide and align national efforts; considers that public support should contribute to safeguarding jobs and industrial activity in Europe, and that beneficiaries of such support should commit to safeguarding decent employment and working conditions and engage in social dialogue;

7.  Endorses simplification and digitalisation to speed up permitting procedures, while respecting environmental safeguards and protecting human health; calls on the Commission to further address permitting bottlenecks for industrial access to energy and industrial decarbonisation in the Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act, including through the adoption of measures to accelerate judicial and administrative procedures, and to assess criteria for targeted exemptions for construction emissions and depositions for clean and net zero projects, storage and grid projects; urges the Member States to improve their administrative capacities to ensure timely processing of permits and to fully implement the Renewable Energy Directive(5), including the overriding public interest principle, and the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA)(6);

8.  Calls on the Commission to take into account, in safeguarding both security of supply and affordability, all available technologies that contribute to reaching the EU’s climate neutrality goal for 2050 in a cost-effective way in the pursuit of a cleaner, stable, secure and more independent energy mix; recognises that renewable energy, alongside nuclear energy for those Member States that decide to use it, is essential for a clean and secure energy mix; calls on the Commission to strengthen cooperation on the safe development and production of small modular reactors in Europe and to advance research in nuclear fusion as a future energy technology; welcomes the announced assessment of the possibility of streamlining licensing practices for new nuclear energy technologies;

9.  Stresses the role of electrification, but notes that significant expansion and modernisation of grids are necessary; calls for an ‘EU strategy on energy flexibility’ with a focus on demand-side response and energy storage; welcomes the intention to update the Heating and Cooling Strategy and Electrification Action Plan; calls on the Commission to recognise the energy efficiency sector as a key strategic sector for industrial decarbonisation and European competitiveness;

10.  Stresses the important role that renewable and low-carbon hydrogen can play in the decarbonisation of industry; calls for the swift adoption and implementation of a simple, technology-neutral and investment-friendly definition of low-carbon hydrogen in the forthcoming delegated regulation to supplement Directive (EU) 2024/1788(7) by specifying a methodology for assessing greenhouse gas emissions savings from low-carbon fuels, while ensuring that such a definition is robust, science-based and incentivises hydrogen production and usage to ensure emissions reductions; supports the announcement of a study on the rules for renewable fuels of non-biological origin (RFNBOs); urges the Commission to take into account the outcomes of this study and the concerns of stakeholders and propose, where appropriate, changes to the delegated act on RFNBOs(8) in order to increase renewable hydrogen production and lower its prices for consumers;

11.  Reiterates the need to develop measures to ensure gas supply at a mitigated cost for those sectors which cannot rely substantially on electrification in the short to medium term; calls for diversified and reliable partnerships in line with the Union’s security, interests and the RePowerEU roadmap;

12.  Urges the Commission to engage in sectoral dialogues with industries, academia, social partners and relevant stakeholders from clean tech and energy-intensive industries and (cross-border) regional industrial clusters to strengthen their competitiveness and facilitate their transition pathways; stresses that industrial ecosystems are highly interconnected and efficient, where closure of one facility affects the whole cluster; calls for annual monitoring and reporting on the competitiveness and resilience of our industrial ecosystems and on the progress made on the transition pathways, so that instruments can be adapted swiftly with tailor-made support when needed;

13.  Underlines that the success of the clean industrial transition hinges on a skilled workforce; calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop a coordinated industrial skills strategy aligned with the NZIA and clean technology priorities; supports the swift deployment and expansion of the Net-Zero Industry Academies and Centres of Vocational Excellence; encourages the use of EU instruments such as ESF+, Erasmus+ and the Just Transition Fund to support targeted up- and reskilling in industrial regions undergoing transformation, including rural areas;

14.  Welcomes lead markets for European-made clean, circular and low-carbon products; underlines the need to stimulate demand through public and private procurement and with the introduction of sustainability and resilience criteria and standards, where appropriate; supports the creation of voluntary carbon intensity labels for industrial products (e.g. for steel and cement), which should reflect carbon performance rather than process bias, and alignment with existing EU legislation, including the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation(9) and the Construction Products Regulation(10); calls on the Commission to explore other requirements to guarantee demand for clean EU-made products;

15.  Welcomes the proposed actions powering the circular economy and the bioeconomy by securing access to materials and resources; encourages the inclusion in the Circular Economy Act of measures to increase the use and affordability of strategic secondary materials within the EU, taking into consideration the aims of the Critical Raw Materials Act(11); stresses the need to define those secondary raw materials that are strategic and that should be subject to export monitoring, such as steel and metal scrap, and to tackle any imbalance in their supply and demand, including by exploring export restrictions; insists on the effective enforcement of the Waste Shipment Regulation(12); calls for a predictable regulatory framework that unlocks circular business models, particularly those based on waste prevention, reuse and high-quality recycling;

16.  Stresses the need to protect the European market from unfair competition and the dumping of industrial overcapacity from non-EU countries by using trade defence mechanisms to their full extent; calls on the Commission to adopt a systematic, proactive and proportionate use of trade defence instruments, including anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations; demands that the enforcement capacity of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation(13) be strengthened, and regrets that this tool has not yet been activated systematically in key sectors; calls for the Commission to treat industrial overcapacity and strategic dependencies as core competition risks requiring a coordinated EU-level response and appropriate tools; calls on the Commission to ensure that access to the EU internal market or to European industrial projects is not granted to actors contributing to structural market distortions or unfair competition;

17.  Welcomes the proposed simplification of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in the first omnibus package as an important step to further enhance the effectiveness of the CBAM to address carbon leakage; reiterates its call for a workable export solution to address the risk of carbon leakage for CBAM goods exported from the EU to non-EU countries; asks the Commission to analyse carefully the risks associated with unverified certificates from outside the EU, which could harm fairness and competitiveness; welcomes the Commission’s intention to present an anti-circumvention strategy before the end of the year, and to consider extending the CBAM to additional sectors as part of the upcoming review; underlines the importance of an effective CBAM in the context of phasing out the free allowances in the EU emissions trading system;

18.  Welcomes, in the context of the implementation of the Industrial Carbon Management Strategy, building the business case for permanent carbon removals into upcoming (reviews of) legislation; recognises that carbon management, including capture, storage, transport and utilisation, may be needed for hard-to-abate sectors; underlines the need to propose a CO2 market framework package for CO2 transport and infrastructure;

19.  Urges accessible funding for SMEs; welcomes accelerated approval and disbursement in instruments such as the Innovation Fund and the NZIA and stresses that the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) initiative needs to be accessible to SMEs; urges further improvements and harmonisation to simplify funding applications, reduce reporting obligations and fast-track small projects;

20.  Stresses the importance of sector-specific approaches to effectively implement the Clean Industrial Deal across the full range of industrial ecosystems; welcomes the Industrial Action Plan for the Automotive Sector, the Steel and Metals Action Plan, the announcement of the Chemicals Industry Package, the Sustainable Transport Investment Plan and the Bioeconomy Strategy as key building blocks of a coherent industrial transition; calls for the Sustainable Transport Investment Plan to include detailed decarbonisation strategies, reflecting the specific technological and investment needs for the different modes of transport; calls for the inclusion of other sectors, such as the European aerospace sector and alternative fuels, in the framework of the Clean Industrial Deal; calls for a specific action plan on clean tech;

21.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.