Comprehensive Assessment of the Clean Industrial Deal

In late February 2025, the European Commission introduced the Clean Industrial Deal (CID). The paper outlines how the decarbonisation of European industry, enhanced competitiveness and innovation, as well as improved security of supply can be achieved in tandem. To this end, the CID presents a series of planned legislative initiatives, setting the course for European industrial policy in the years ahead. In an initial assessment, 14 researchers from the Wuppertal Institute analyse what the CID means for European – and thus indirectly for German – industrial policy.

In the 16-page paper "Rapid assessment of the Clean Industrial Deal: an initial assessment of the EU Commission's industrial policy work programme for 2025-2029", the authors summarise the objectives and instruments for each of the six main topics of the CID and evaluate them from a scientific point of view. In six chapters, they provide a compact but detailed analysis of the core areas of the Clean Industrial Deal: affordable energy, green lead markets, private and public investment, circular economy, global markets and international partnerships, as well as social justice and just transition.

While the plan is well-conceived, its financing remains partially unclear

The analysis shows that the CID is suitable for addressing the key issues, but it largely shifts the responsibility for its implementation and financing to the member states. From a German perspective, the decisive factors will include how the 500 billion infrastructure fund is allocated and what industrial policy priorities the next German government will set: These points will also be a determining factor at European level as to whether sufficient public funds can be mobilised to leverage the necessary private investment.

According to the researchers' notably positive conclusion, the European Commission has successfully linked industrial transformation with competitiveness, security of supply, and resilience through the CID: The EU is thus sending an important signal to the European economy to consistently pursue the transformation initiated in recent years with the EU Green Deal. In an extremely volatile, difficult geopolitical situation, the CID is providing urgently needed impetus and offering continuity and certainty of direction. And both are urgently needed in order to restore the economy's confidence to invest in the future and position Europe for economic success.

The analysis of the CID can be downloaded free of charge via the following link.