{"id":851078,"date":"2026-03-26T07:19:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T07:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/851078\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T07:19:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T07:19:15","slug":"uk-car-and-steel-firms-fear-being-frozen-out-of-made-in-europe-deals-by-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/851078\/","title":{"rendered":"UK car and steel firms fear being frozen out of ‘Made in Europe’ deals by EU"},"content":{"rendered":"

An EU scheme to protect the bloc\u2019s industries<\/a> as the world reels from Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs will be \u201cvery bad\u201d for the British economy if the UK is shut out, a leading business chief has said.<\/p>\n

Shevaun Haviland, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), told The i Paper that vital industries like car manufacturing and steel would \u201creally struggle\u201d if the so-called \u201cMade in Europe\u201d scheme excludes British firms that trade across the UK-EU border.<\/p>\n

Business Secretary Peter Kyle has already been lobbying Brussels to include the UK in the scheme, which will give EU firms priority for Government contracts and subsidies, boosting their competitiveness against companies from outside the bloc.<\/p>\n

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n

But if the France-led scheme treats Britain as a \u201cthird country\u201d with no privileged access due to Brexit<\/a>, it would be highly damaging for the economy, Haviland suggested.<\/p>\n

She urged the Government to do whatever it takes to ensure British companies are not locked out of the scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very concerned about it,\u201d Haviland said ahead of the BCC\u2019s Driving International Trade Conference in central London.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be very bad if we don\u2019t get Made in Europe right.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we are working with our British chambers across Europe, with the ambassadors from Europe in the UK, to make sure we try and help them put pressure on our colleagues in the EU to make sure that the UK is part of those partner supply chains.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to reports earlier this month, Nissan has privately warned the UK Government that it could be forced to close its plant in Sunderland if the UK is not fully included in the Made in Europe scheme.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Haviland backed Chancellor Rachel Reeves\u2019 call for an \u201cambitious\u201d youth mobility scheme with the EU, amid reports of wrangling in Whitehall over how tightly to set a cap on the number of visas that can be issued to European and British under-30s to travel, live and work freely between the two territories.<\/p>\n

Youth mobility has proven the major sticking point in negotiations on the first round of Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s so-called \u201cBrexit reset\u201d designed to draw the UK and EU back closer together.<\/p>\n

But Haviland appeared to back the idea of a more generous cap, which is more likely to find agreement in Brussels, which would favour a scheme with no limit on numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly want to see an ambitious package, absolutely, and I am pretty sure that the UK population, their concern on immigration isn\u2019t about students who come and then they maybe go \u2013 that\u2019s the visa that they\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think we should try and stop thinking about all of this as a cost, and think about what return on investment universities or the economy will get from the ability to have these young people in the UK and our young people to go the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haviland urged the Government to \u201cspeed up\u201d the current negotiations, including on food and drink trade and linking carbon taxes, as well as backing the Chancellor\u2019s push for the UK to align with EU laws across more sectors of the economy in a bid to boost growth and trade, even if it means following Brussels\u2019 rules with no say and paying into the bloc\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cWe have to pragmatically, sector-by-sector, where it works \u2013 If you want to trade with someone, not just the EU, anywhere else we trade \u2013 you have to align to a certain degree to deliver the products that they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say this to all political parties \u2013 the language of Brexit is old news, don\u2019t use that language any more.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you want your young people to be able to go to university in the EU? Yes, I do. Do we? Yes, we do.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, let\u2019s get some big things over the line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An EU scheme to protect the bloc\u2019s industries as the world reels from Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,554,16,10051,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-851078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-trump-tariffs","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-uk-economy","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116294265575161657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}