Scaling Europe’s battery sector: A call for fair support

The European battery sector does not need a new strategy – it needs a level playing field to scale. Both the European Battery Alliance (EBA) and industry leaders are calling for pragmatic measures to ensure Europe’s cell manufacturers can compete globally.

The CEOs of ACC, Verkor, and PowerCo have published an open letter, “Who Will Make Our Batteries? Europe’s Moment of Truth,” urging immediate, targeted measures to support the scale-up of European battery production. The letter warns that without decisive action, Europe risks losing its strategic autonomy in one of the defining technologies of this century.

This message strongly resonates with the EBA’s recent interventions. In an opinion article published last week in Sustainable Views, Emma Nehrenheim, EBA Managing Director, stressed that the European battery industry does not need a rethink but rather the right conditions to thrive. She underlined that Europe’s producers are experiencing predictable challenges in building complex industrial capacity from scratch, similar to those faced by Asian peers in their early years, and argued that temporary, output-based support is the most effective tool to help companies bridge the gap to competitiveness.

Both the CEOs’ open letter and EBA’s op-ed converge on the same conclusion: Europe’s battery sector has already achieved remarkable progress, but the decisive phase lies ahead. Without pragmatic, output-based support schemes at EU level, Europe risks ceding a €250 billion annual market to imports, with significant consequences for its automotive industry, innovation base, and strategic autonomy.

The EBA welcomes this united call and urges policymakers to act at this critical juncture. As both industry and EBA underline, failure to act would undermine investor confidence and Europe’s ability to industrialise clean technologies at scale – while swift, targeted action would secure Europe’s place in the global battery race.