By Julia Payne<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS, April 16 (Reuters) – The UK’s automotive industry group SMMT said on Thursday carmakers need clarity now on whether Britain will \u200ccount as ‘Made in EU’ in the European Commission’s Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) \u200cpolicy as the ambiguity risks delaying investments.<\/p>\n
The trade uncertainty comes at a time when both Britain \u200band the EU face stiff competition from cheap Chinese electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
“The objective was to bolster the competitiveness of European industry vis-a-vis the increasing challenge coming from further afield, low-cost countries. We are not a low-cost country. The intention of this regulation \u200cwas not to hit \u2060the EU-UK trade,” SMMT chief executive Michael Hawes told reporters.<\/p>\n
The IAA sets low-carbon and ‘Made in EU’ requirements for public procurement of, \u2060or subsidies for, making aluminium, cement, steel, renewable energy and green tech.<\/p>\n
Under the proposal, countries with which the EU has trade agreements would be included as ‘Made in EU’ \u200bwith \u200bany exclusions to be published once the \u200bIAA is adopted, which could take \u200cat least a year.<\/p>\n
However, Hawes said the car industry needs a political statement on Britain sooner – ideally ahead of an EU-UK summit due to take place in June or July. An IAA annex specific to automakers would require vehicles to be assembled in the EU, which could exclude British automakers.<\/p>\n
SMMT said the \u200cannual value of EU-Britain automotive trade was about \u200b80 billion euros ($94.34 billion) and the two sides \u200bremain each other’s biggest passenger \u200bcar markets. Britain is also the EU’s biggest buyer of \u200cauto components, SMMT said, citing UN \u200bdata said.<\/p>\n
“So for a \u200bcouple of years unless there is a clear indication from the outset … it casts a cloud over the UK automotive industry. It’s harder to \u200bput UK investment on \u200ca boardroom agenda if you can’t cost the future. We’re trying \u200bto get a clear political statement now,” Hawes said.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8480 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Julia Payne; Editing by Aurora Ellis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Julia Payne BRUSSELS, April 16 (Reuters) – The UK’s automotive industry group SMMT said on Thursday carmakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6946,13,5399,6944,6945,4927,595,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-15244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-automotive-industry","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-european-commission","11":"tag-iaa","12":"tag-michael-hawes","13":"tag-smmt","14":"tag-trade-agreements","15":"tag-uk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116411073977621048","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}