Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On 16 December 2025 the European Commission adopted the Communication on a Battery Booster Strategy (later published in the Official Journal as C/2026/682), part of the EU Automotive Package presented alongside the CO2 emission-standards review, the Automotive Omnibus simplification, and the Corporate Vehicle Decarbonisation initiative. The Battery Booster envelopes EUR 1.8bn of EU-budget support for the European battery value chain: EUR 1.5bn from the Innovation Fund as interest-free loans for European battery cell producers ramping to giga-scale output (delivered through a dedicated Battery Booster Facility, with the implementing Commission Decision in stakeholder consultation through 15 March 2026), plus EUR 300m for critical raw materials projects in Europe. The strategy is the first standalone EU industrial-finance instrument targeted exclusively at battery cell manufacturing, and is paired with RESourceEU (3 Dec 2025) and the Industrial Accelerator Act proposal (4 Mar 2026) to stitch together upstream CRM, midstream cell production and downstream automotive demand.

The European Commission approved a EUR 201.4 million (USD ~231.9 million) Innovation Fund grant for Novo Energy Production AB, funding the "NOVO One" gigafactory project in Gothenburg, Sweden, under the Innovation Fund 2024 Battery call (IF24 Battery). CINEA lists NOVO One's status as "Grant signed," one of five EV battery-cell projects (alongside ACCEPT and AGATHE in France, WGF2G in Germany, and 46inEU in Poland) confirmed under the same call, together worth EUR 643 million, with grant agreements formally signed on 10 November 2025. Novo Energy — originally a 50/50 joint venture between Volvo Cars and Northvolt targeting up to 50 GWh/year of NMC cell capacity — came under Volvo's full ownership in 2025 after Northvolt's bankruptcy left the venture without its battery-technology partner.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and General Administration of Customs (GAC) jointly issued Announcement No. 58 of 2025 on 9 October 2025, adding high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries (cells and packs, >=300 Wh/kg), artificial graphite anode materials, related production equipment, and key manufacturing technologies to the dual-use export control list under licence requirement. The controls were scheduled to take effect 8 November 2025 but were suspended the day before via Announcement No. 70 (2025), which deferred entry-into-force until 10 November 2026 in the context of the US-China Busan economic-trade arrangement. Controls remain legislatively adopted and will become operative unless the suspension is renewed or withdrawn.

On 5 March 2025 the European Commission adopted Communication COM(2025) 95 final, the "Industrial Action Plan for the European Automotive Sector", a horizontal sectoral industrial-policy framework structured around five pillars: innovation and digitalisation, clean mobility, competitiveness and supply-chain resilience, skills and the social dimension, and a global level playing field. Headline financial commitments include EUR 1bn under Horizon Europe for SDV/AI in mobility (2025-2027), EUR 1.8bn Innovation Fund earmark for EU battery cell manufacturing, EUR 350m for next-generation battery R&D (2025-2027), and EUR 570m under the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (2025-2026) for heavy-duty charging corridors. The plan also delivers a targeted CO2-standards flexibility allowing 2025-2027 combined-year compliance for cars and vans, and the launch of the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance.

On 26 February 2025 the European Commission adopted the "Clean Industrial Deal" (CID), Communication COM(2025) 85 final, framed as a joint roadmap for competitiveness and decarbonisation. The CID bundles state-aid simplification, energy-cost relief, lead-market creation, capital mobilisation and circular-economy mandates into a single industrial strategy targeting both energy-intensive industries (steel, metals, chemicals, cement) and clean-tech manufacturing (batteries, solar, wind, heat pumps, electrolyzers). The Commission claims the package will mobilise more than €100 billion of public-and-private financing for EU-made clean manufacturing through a strengthened Innovation Fund, amendments to the InvestEU Regulation (up to €50bn additional guarantee capacity) and a proposed Industrial Decarbonisation Bank. CID directly precedes the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF, adopted 25 June 2025) and seeds legislative work on an Industrial Accelerator Act, a Circular Economy Act, and a strengthened CBAM. Severity 4 on mixed basis: explicit €100bn+ quant headline plus qualitative breadth across the EU industrial perimeter, formally re-anchoring the von der Leyen II mandate around competitiveness rather than pure decarbonisation.

Sweden's first horizontal foreign-direct-investment screening regime. Lag (2023:560) om granskning av utländska direktinvesteringar — promulgated (utfärdad) by the Ministry of Justice on 21 September 2023 on the basis of Government Bill 2022/23:116, and entered into force on 1 December 2023 — establishes mandatory ex-ante notification to Inspektionen för strategiska produkter (ISP) for direct or indirect acquisitions of voting rights of ≥10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 65%, or 90% in Swedish entities conducting "skyddsvärd verksamhet" (protected business activities). The protected-activity perimeter is defined by Förordning (2023:624) and the ISP listing across seven sub-categories: essential services, security-sensitive activities, critical raw materials/metals/ minerals, sensitive location and personal data, military equipment, dual-use goods, and emerging or strategically protected technologies. Both EU and non-EU investors are within scope. Unnotified transactions are void by operation of law and may carry administrative fines of SEK 25,000 to SEK 100 million. From 1 Dec 2023 to 29 Nov 2024 ISP processed 1,206 notifications, opened 24 deeper screenings, approved 11, approved 5 with conditions, and prohibited 1 transaction.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 establishes a comprehensive EU statutory framework for all battery categories (portable, SLI, LMT, EV, industrial), imposing supply-chain due-diligence obligations for cobalt, lithium, nickel, and natural graphite; mandatory recycled-content thresholds; carbon-footprint declarations; a digital battery passport; and ambitious collection and recycling-efficiency targets, with rolling application dates running from February 2024 through August 2036. It repeals Battery Directive 2006/66/EC and applies to every economic operator placing batteries on the EU market, binding every EV, consumer-electronics, and stationary-storage supply chain that relies on DRC cobalt, Australian/Chilean lithium, Indonesian/Philippine nickel, and Chinese/Mozambican graphite.