Making ‘Made in Europe’ Good for Workers

Europe faces mounting pressure to rebuild industrial capacity, address strategic dependencies, and create high-quality jobs as global competition intensifies. The shift toward European local content rules – driven by the Net-Zero Industry Act, Critical Raw Materials Act, and the new Industrial Accelerator Act – signals a major and rapid political turn toward “Made in Europe” strategies aimed at securing domestic value creation. However, this is not a simple debate with major ramifications in terms of global supply chains, international relations and costs (both administrative and product prices). Trade unions argue that any local content policies must be tied to enforceable social conditionalities to ensure good jobs, stronger social dialogue, fair wages, and strong workers’ rights, as well as significant investments into industry, infrastructure, and training.

Jointly organised with industriAll Europe, the aim of this high-level roundtable is to bring together union leaders, politicians, policymakers, and industrial policy experts to discuss how EU level local content policies can be shaped to ensure decent work and how this can feed into a larger progressive Made in Europe industry policy framework.

Contact Stephan Thalhofer, Policy Advisor, FES Competence Centre Climate and Social Justice: Stephan.Thalhofer(at)fes.de