Fudan Development Institute

2025.05.26 14:00-15:30 

14:00-15:30 pm, May 26, 2025

During the past decade, the European Union has discarded its prior objections to proactive industrial policy and adopted a series of new policy instruments targeting strategic industrial sectors in a context of intensifying global geo-economic competition. This presentation will introduce the impetus and deployment of the EU’s new industrial policy agenda, casting light on processes of institutional negotiation and coordination between the supranational level (primarily the European Commission) and national member-states. Challenges encountered by the EU’s industrial policy efforts will be highlighted. First, a sectoral case-study of the electric vehicle battery industry will illustrate obstacles to building autonomous European supply chains in green technologies. Second, the EU’s difficulties in leveraging financial capital at scale in the service of its industrial policy objectives will be examined. In both these areas, China’s industrial policy experiences offer revealing contrasts and lessons for Europe.