Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2675 actions· ✨ 91 recent

Government of Romania Decision (Hotărârea de Guvern) nr. 1464 of 21 November 2024, published in Monitorul Oficial Part I no. 1212bis of 3 December 2024, approves Romania's first National Strategy for Non-Energy Mineral Resources for the 2025-2035 period. The strategy is an 11-year programmatic public-policy framework spanning geological research, inventory and evaluation of critical + strategic raw materials, exploitation and advanced processing, environmental restoration of mining areas, superior valorisation of secondary resources from waste dumps and tailings ponds, geothermal water utilisation, and spa-tourism diversification. The strategy serves as Romania's domestic implementation framework under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation 2024/1252) and is the parent authority under which Romania submitted the three CRMA Strategic-Project applications approved by the European Commission on 25 March 2025 (Euro Sun Mining gold/copper at Rovina, Salrom salt + lithium, Verde Magnesium magnesium recovery from tailings) totalling approximately €615m of investment.

The German Federal Cabinet adopted a 49-measure cross-sectoral supply-side reform package on 17 July 2024 alongside the draft 2025 Federal Budget, aimed at reversing Germany's decade-long slide in global competitiveness rankings (from 6th to 24th since 2014). The package covers tax and social-security exemptions for overtime and weekend work, foreign skilled-worker incentives (Aktivrente / extended short-time-work rules), bureaucracy reduction targeting ~€944m/yr in compliance-cost savings, flexible working-time arrangements, energy-price relief for industry (Strompreispaket), accelerated infrastructure and planning-procedure reforms, expanded investment deductions and degressive depreciation for movable assets, and a raised R&D-allowance ceiling. The initiative is the supply-side / regulatory-reform complement to the simultaneously adopted SVIKG €500bn special infrastructure fund and is structurally analogous to the UK Mansion House Reforms and France's France 2030 productivity-enhancement pillar.

On 22 January 2024, Brazil's National Council for Industrial Development (CNDI), reactivated by President Lula in 2023, launched Nova Indústria Brasil (NIB) — Brazil's first comprehensive national industrial policy since the 2011-2014 Plano Brasil Maior. The framework commits roughly R$300 billion (~USD 60 billion) in financing through 2026, distributed across loans, non-refundable grants and equity participations administered by BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank), Finep (Research and Projects Financing Company) and Embrapii (Brazilian Industrial Research and Innovation Company), with quantitative targets running to 2033. The R$300bn envelope combines R$106bn announced at the first CNDI meeting in July 2023 with R$194bn redirected from existing budget lines. NIB is structured around six "missions": (1) sustainable and digital agro-industrial chains, (2) health-industrial complex resilience (medicines, vaccines, devices), (3) urban infrastructure and green mobility, (4) digital transformation and Industry 4.0 including semiconductors, (5) bioeconomy and energy transition, and (6) defence, sovereignty and national-security technologies. Two presidential decrees signed the same day establish local-content preferences for New PAC public-procurement bids and create an Interministerial Public Procurement Commission. As of February 2025, BNDES had approved R$220bn in NIB-aligned operations, and the plan has anchored downstream sectoral programmes including Brasil Semicon, the Mover automotive programme and Mais Inovação.