What “Made in Europe” Really Means for Cleantech and Industry
Blogpost by Marlène Siméon, based on the input of FCA’s cleantech analysts and policy team members
For Europe, the debate around “Made in Europe” often gravitates toward two polarized choices: full self-sufficiency or full exposure to global markets. Recent positions from several EU Member States reflect how politically charged this debate has become, driven by legitimate fears of dependency, deindustrialization, and loss of strategic control.
FCA’s work consistently points to a third path: resilience. This is not about producing everything in Europe, but about anchoring the parts of cleantech value chains that matter most for jobs, industrial capability, and long-term competitiveness with a ‘Made in Europe’ criteria, while avoiding the kind of concentrated dependencies that have undermined Europe’s security in the past. Security comes from controlling the value-rich and system-critical parts of the chain, not from localizing the most resource-intensive steps.
Imports are not the risk, concentration is
A recurring fear in the political debate is that imports automatically equal vulnerability. However, the problem is not imports per se, but rather a 99% dependence on a single supplier or country, as experienced with fossil gas and increasingly with lithium-ion batteries.
Resilience replaces uncontrolled dependency with managed exposure:
- diversified sourcing across regions;
- importing intermediates rather than fragile energy carriers;
- and retaining leverage through EU standards, lead markets, and instruments such as CBAM.
Steel: Why resilience is about value, not tonnes
Steel sits at the heart of the current political debate, and rightly so. It underpins construction, mobility, energy infrastructure, and industrial manufacturing across Europe. Where steel is made matters just as much as how it is made.
Around 70-80% of steel emissions occur in the ironmaking step, which is also the most energy- and resource-intensive part of the value chain, while employing less than 10% of the steel workforce. Europe lacks high-grade iron ore, and global iron and steel production is already highly concentrated. Attempting to force the full upstream ironmaking step into Europe by applying strict local content requirements would increase costs and raw-material exposure, without safeguarding most jobs or industrial know-how.
Resilience in steel therefore means redesigning the value chain, by applying “Made in Europe” to downstream segments. A clear priority is to secure diversified imports of primary or green iron, while anchoring steelmaking, finishing, recycling, scrap upgrading, and quality differentiation in Europe. These downstream segments capture the majority of value and employment and are where Europe’s industrial clusters and skills are strongest.
In practice, resilience in the steel sector is not determined by how much of the value chain is localized, but by which segments are. Anchoring steelmaking, finishing, and recycling in Europe matters more than forcing upstream ironmaking where Europe lacks resources. In steel specifically, transporting green iron or hot briquetted iron (HBI) is simpler and more resilient than transporting green hydrogen, and avoids costly infrastructure lock-in and conversion losses. Europe retains control over what can be sold on its market, even if not every upstream step happens domestically.
Long Duration Energy Storage: A cornerstone of the European system resilience
Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) is central to a resilient European energy system. A renewables-based power system will require more than short duration lithium-ion batteries, especially to manage seasonal variability and industrial electricity demand.
Crucially, non-lithium-ion LDES technologies remain an open global field. Thermal energy storage, mechanical storage, and other long duration solutions rely on abundant materials such as steel, concrete, salts, and rocks, and not on critical minerals that have highly concentrated supply chains. Applying local content requirements to these raw materials would add little resilience.
This plays directly to Europe’s strengths: industrial heat, turbines, heat exchangers, power electronics, and large-scale system integration. Here, “Made in Europe” is about building resilience into the energy system itself while anchoring manufacturing and engineering capabilities in Europe.
Cement: A naturally resilient European industry
Some sectors are inherently local. Cement is one of them. Limestone is abundant in Europe. Plants serve regional markets, and the distances involved are short . Cement is a value chain Europe can fully retain and modernize while strengthening industrial resilience, so in this case, local content requirements are both logical and effective across the full value chain. Cement can be fully produced, decarbonized, and supplied within Europe, thereby strengthening regional industrial resilience without introducing cost or supply risks. In addition, cement is covered under the CBAM, which reduces the risk of carbon leakage.
Hydrogen, batteries, and chemicals: Resilience through strategic focus
Electrolyzers remain a strategic opportunity, and local content could apply to their manufacturing. Europe retains strong technological foundations, and while material dependencies such as platinum exist, they can be manageable through diversification and recycling.
Non-lithium-ion batteries for ships and planes will be crucial for zero-emission trips. Unlike mass-market lithium-ion batteries, these applications are safety-critical, highly integrated, and far from commoditized. Here, most of the value sits in system integration, certification, and performance optimization rather than in cell manufacturing alone. This makes them one of the few battery segments where targeted “Made in Europe” requirements still make sense, anchoring engineering, integration, testing, and recycling capabilities in Europe, while sourcing materials and cells through diversified global supply chains.
For chemicals and green molecules, resilience means accepting physical and economic realities. Large-scale ammonia, methanol, and basic petrochemicals will move toward regions with the cheapest renewable energy. Applying rigid local content rules to these upstream molecules would undermine competitiveness without increasing security. Europe’s strategic focus should be on high-value chemicals, process innovation, and industrial systems, while importing bulk molecules under diversified supply agreements. Analyses should shine a light on some of the difficult trade-offs that must be made between self-sufficiency, competitiveness, decarbonization, and low cost in the transition to net-zero emissions. For example, while such trade-offs will involve difficult decisions, it is worth bearing in mind that in 2023 the EU imported almost all of its fossil fuels such as oil and petroleum products (97.3 %) as well as gas (91.1 %). In light of this, the EU is highly likely to improve its energy independence in aviation and maritime under most decarbonization scenarios.
What “Made in Europe” should mean going forward
Resilience is built where Europe masters knowledge, standards, and system integration, not where it tries to replicate every upstream step regardless of resourceconstraints. It is about a proactive, forward-looking and selective industrial policy that is cognizant of Europe’s competitive advantages and disadvantages.
“Made in Europe” should therefore mean:
- selectively anchoring jobs and industrial capabilities;
- avoiding single-point dependencies;
- and designing value chains that remain competitive under real-world conditions.
The lesson from past crises is not that Europe must do everything at home, but that it must never again allow critical parts of the system to depend on a single external actor. Resilience is not about doing everything domestically, it is about ensuring Europe always has options