Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

The European Commission on 4 March 2026 adopted COM(2026) 100 final, the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), the central horizontal industrial- policy instrument of the 2024-29 Commission term. The proposal targets raising EU manufacturing's share of GDP from 14.3% (2024) to at least 20% by 2035 via three pillars: (i) demand-side "Made in EU" and low-carbon public-procurement preferences for strategic sectors; (ii) FDI conditionality on investments above €100 million from countries with >40% global manufacturing share in batteries, EVs, solar PV or critical raw materials; (iii) accelerated permitting through a one-stop-shop and member-state-designated Industrial Acceleration Areas. The IAA is a proposal — co-decision adoption is expected mid-to-late 2027.

The European Commission approved France's €1.1 billion state aid scheme (SA.120765) under Section 6.1 of the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF), authorising a tax credit (Crédit d'Impôt Industrie Verte — C3IV) for strategic investments that add new cleantech manufacturing capacity in solar PV, onshore and offshore wind technologies, heat pumps, and battery technologies. The scheme is available across the whole of France until 31 December 2028 and is the eighth CISAF cleantech-manufacturing- capacity approval, bringing cumulative CISAF cleantech support to over €10 billion. It is the first CISAF approval delivered via a tax-credit instrument, distinct from the grant-based architectures used in the parallel Germany SA.121215, Greece SA.117469, and Luxembourg SA.120921 approvals.

The European Commission approved a €3 billion German state aid scheme (SA.121215) under the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF), authorising federal support for strategic investments in cleantech manufacturing capacity across Germany through 31 December 2030. Aid is delivered via grants, tax advantages, and interest subsidies or guarantees for new loans, and is open to companies across the entire German territory. Eligible activities cover the production of net-zero technologies listed in Annex II of the CISAF — including batteries, solar PV, wind turbines, electrolysers, heat pumps, and CCUS equipment — as well as the production of new or recovered critical raw materials necessary for those final products and main specific components. This is the first €3-billion-tier individual CISAF approval in the register and establishes Germany as the principal Member State implementer of the Clean Industrial Deal's manufacturing-capacity investment pillar.

The European Commission approved a €4.1 billion Hungarian state aid scheme (SA.120705) under Section 6.1 of the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF), authorising grants and tax advantages for strategic investments that add cleantech-manufacturing capacity across Hungary through 31 December 2030. Eligible activities cover net-zero technologies listed in Annex II of the CISAF — batteries, solar PV, wind turbines, electrolysers, heat pumps, and CCUS equipment — plus their main specific components and the production or recovery of related critical raw materials. The scheme is open to companies across the whole territory of Hungary and is the CISAF-era successor to Hungary's EUR 2.36 billion TCTF net-zero scheme (approved 2023-08-30, aid deadline 31 December 2025), which channelled the bulk of Chinese and Korean battery/EV-supply-chain FDI into the Debrecen–Szeged–Göd–Nyíregyháza industrial cluster.

The European Commission approved an Italian State aid scheme worth EUR 1.5 billion (USD ~1.74 billion) under the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF), authorising direct grants, preferential loans, or a combination of both for strategic investments that add new cleantech manufacturing capacity. Eligible technologies span solar photovoltaic (including polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, solar glass, modules, inverters, tracking systems and mounting structures), onshore and offshore wind, heat pumps, geothermal, energy storage and batteries, hydrogen, and biomethane/biogas component manufacturing. The scheme is open to companies throughout Italy, is co-financed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), and runs until 31 December 2030.

The European Commission approved on 6 November 2025 a EUR 700 million Spanish State aid scheme (SA.119884) under the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework (CISAF Section 6.1), to support the build-out of new manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies listed in CISAF Annex II. The scheme funds direct grants, open Spain-wide and available until 31 December 2028, for investments producing batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, electrolysers, carbon capture/storage/utilisation equipment, and the critical raw materials used to make these components. It is a distinct, larger sister scheme to Spain's EUR 408 million SA.119880 CISAF Section 5 scheme (approved five weeks later), which instead funds decarbonisation of existing industrial processes rather than new clean-tech production capacity.

Türkiye's Ministry of Trade published İthalatta Gözetim Uygulanmasına İlişkin Tebliğ (No: 2023/2)'de Değişiklik Yapılmasına Dair Tebliğ in Resmî Gazete on 17 July 2025, doubling the unit customs (CIF) reference value that triggers the country's import-surveillance mechanism for photovoltaic cells not assembled into modules or panels (GTİP 8541.42.00.00.00), from USD 85/kg to USD 170/kg. Imports declared at or below the new threshold require a "gözetim belgesi" (supervision certificate) from the Imports General Directorate before customs clearance. The amendment entered into force sixty days after publication, on 15 September 2025. Global Trade Alert logs the intervention as "certainly harmful" and names China and Cambodia as the principal exporters affected. The measure does not block imports outright but raises the price floor below which a licensing/documentation step is triggered, functioning as a de facto minimum-price barrier against underpriced photovoltaic-cell imports — part of a broader push to protect Türkiye's domestic solar-manufacturing base as it scales toward the National Energy Plan's 52.9 GW installed-solar target.

China's Ministry of Commerce issued Announcement 2025 No. 3 on 9 January 2025, the Final Determination of its Trade and Investment Barrier (TIB) investigation into the European Commission's enforcement practices under the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR). MOFCOM concluded that EC practices in FSR investigations targeting Chinese enterprises in rail transport, photovoltaics, wind energy, and security-equipment public procurement constitute trade and investment barriers under Article 3 of China's Rules on Trade and Investment Barrier Investigations (对外贸易壁垒调查规则). The determination documents €20.88 billion in estimated economic losses — including €10.18 billion from abandoned bids — and finds de-facto discrimination against Chinese SOEs relative to investors from other jurisdictions. MOFCOM committed to taking "necessary measures" including bilateral consultations, multilateral dispute settlement, or "other appropriate measures" to safeguard Chinese enterprises' legitimate rights and interests.

On 3 April 2024 the European Commission opened two simultaneous FSR Phase II in-depth investigations — the second and third ever under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (Regulation 2022/2560) — concerning a Romanian public-procurement procedure for the design, construction and operation of a 454.97 MW EU-co-funded photovoltaic park (Rovinari Est). The first investigation targeted the ENEVO Group consortium including LONGi Solar Technologie GmbH (German subsidiary wholly owned by HK-listed LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd.); the second targeted Shanghai Electric UK Co. Ltd. and Shanghai Electric Hong Kong International Engineering Co., Ltd. (Chinese SOE). Both respondents withdrew from the procurement procedure after the Commission's opening; the Commission subsequently closed both investigations. This was the first FSR Phase II enforcement action in the renewable-energy / solar-PV sector and the first targeting a private Chinese-listed company's EU subsidiary.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security added five Xinjiang-based entities to the Entity List on June 24, 2021, citing their roles in human rights violations and forced labor against Uyghur, Kazakh, and other Muslim minority populations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The five entities — four major polysilicon and silicon producers plus the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) paramilitary body — are subject to a presumption-of- denial licensing policy for most items. Together the four polysilicon companies supplied a significant fraction of global polysilicon feedstock used in solar panel manufacturing.