Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 13 April 2026 the Council of the EU and the European Parliament reached a provisional political agreement, in trilogue with the Commission, on the new EU steel safeguard regulation that will replace the existing WTO-safeguard-based measure (Regulation (EU) 2019/159, last tightened by Implementing Regulation 2025/612) expiring on 30 June 2026. The agreement adopts the core architecture of the Commission's October 2025 proposal (procedure 2025/0726(COD)): an overall duty-free tariff-rate quota of approximately 18.3 million tonnes per year — a roughly 47% reduction versus the 2024 safeguard quotas — covering 30 product categories, with the out-of-quota customs duty raised from 25% to 50%. The deal also introduces a mandatory "country of melt and pour" declaratory requirement on steel imports and obliges the Commission to assess, within two years, whether the country of melt-and-pour should become the basis for country-specific TRQ allocations (closing transhipment loopholes that have allowed Chinese-melted steel to enter via third-country processors). The co-legislators added a reinforced and time-bound review mechanism: a first Commission review of product scope within six months of entry into force, with subsequent biennial scope reviews thereafter. Statutorily, this is a NEW instrument — a regulation adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure, not an implementing act under the WTO Agreement on Safeguards / Regulation (EU) 2015/478 — so it is filed as a new action with a `responds_to` link to the predecessor regime. Formal adoption by Council and EP plenary is expected in May 2026 ahead of the 1 July 2026 application date.

On 3 December 2025 the European Commission adopted the RESourceEU Action Plan (COM(2025) 945 final), a horizontal critical-raw-materials supply-security instrument complementing the 2023 Critical Raw Materials Act. The plan mobilises €3 billion in EU funds within twelve months for priority CRM projects, creates a European Critical Raw Materials Centre operational from 2026 (modelled on Japan's JOGMEC) acting as portfolio manager for diversified supply chains, joint purchasing and stockpiling, and activates the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA) "vigilance" and "emergency" modes from May 2026 with mandatory information requests, priority deliveries and coordinated stockpile distribution. A targeted CRMA amendment expands product labelling for permanent-magnet recycling and adds export controls on permanent-magnet and aluminium scrap. Targets a 30-50% reduction by 2029 in single-country dependency for battery, rare-earth and defence raw-material value chains.

On 25 March 2025 the European Commission adopted the first list of 47 Strategic Projects inside the EU under Article 7 of the Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1252), followed on 4 June 2025 by 13 Strategic Projects located in third countries — 60 designations in total. The 47 EU projects span 13 Member States and 14 strategic raw materials, with an expected EUR 22.5bn capital-investment envelope; the 13 third-country projects require a further EUR 5.5bn. Designation triggers fast-track permitting (max 27 months for extraction, 15 months for processing/recycling), preferential access to EU/EIB/EBRD finance, and Member State priority status, operationalising the CRMA's 2030 benchmarks (≥10% extraction, ≥40% processing, ≥25% recycling, ≤65% single-country dependence).

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/612 of 24 March 2025 amends the EU steel safeguard regime first imposed by Regulation (EU) 2019/159, materially tightening the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system that governs imports across 26 product categories of finished and semi-finished steel. The Commission cuts the annual liberalisation rate (the volume by which TRQs grow each year) from 1% to 0.1%, effectively freezing the in-quota volumes available to third-country exporters at near-current levels through the safeguard's expiry on 30 June 2026. The regulation also repeals the carry-over mechanism that previously allowed unused quarterly TRQ volumes to roll into the next quarter for product categories under significant import pressure, and eliminates the ability of exporting countries to access the residual (other-country) quota in the final quarter of each safeguard year for those categories. The latter change forecloses the route by which Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Korean and Vietnamese mills had increasingly back-filled into unused Russian and Belarusian quota allocations after the 2022 sanctions disruption. Most adjustments enter into force on 1 April 2025; the slower liberalisation pace and the carry-over removal in the most pressured categories take effect 1 July 2025. The measure is the headline trade-policy deliverable of the European Steel and Metals Action Plan unveiled by the Commission on 19 March 2025, and it is explicitly framed as a defensive response to (i) global overcapacity in Chinese steel and (ii) anticipated trade diversion into the EU after the United States reinstated universal 25% Section 232 steel/aluminum tariffs on 12 March 2025. Above-quota imports remain subject to the 25% out-of-quota duty inherited from the 2019 safeguard.

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.

Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council, published in OJ L 130 on 16 May 2023 and entering into force on 17 May 2023, establishes the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — the Union's primary instrument for preventing carbon leakage at the external border. The regulation applies an equivalent carbon price to embedded greenhouse gas emissions in imports of six sector groups (iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen) from non-EU/EEA/Swiss counterparts, complementing the EU Emissions Trading System's domestic coverage. A transitional reporting-only phase operated from 1 October 2023 through 31 December 2025; the definitive certificate-purchase-and-surrender regime entered full application from 1 January 2026.

The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) entered its definitive phase on 1 January 2026 following a transitional reporting period that began October 2023. Under Regulation (EU) 2023/956, importers of goods in six carbon-intensive sectors (iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilizers, electricity, and hydrogen) must now purchase CBAM certificates corresponding to embedded carbon emissions. The Q1 2026 certificate price was set at EUR 75.36 per tonne CO2, calculated from EU ETS auction prices. In 2026, the adjustment factor is 2.5%, rising annually to 100% by 2034.