Positive perception of the Clean Industrial Deal

The European Commission has unveiled the Clean Industrial Deal, which is a welcome pathway to balancing sustainability and competitiveness needs at a time when the European economy requires serious boosting. 

Unlocking and unleashing the potential of the European rail supply industry – a world leader facing an increasingly unfair competition landscape – is a paramount. By reducing burdens and ensuring pathways to sustainable investment, Europe can entrench the European rail supply’s industry as a strategic asset. 
While there are many elements in this package which will support energy-intensive industries, its implementation must acknowledge the rail supply industry as a strategic sector in upcoming public procurement initiatives and provide it with simpler and broader access to funding. Competitiveness should be approached in a coherent way, and clean downstream industries such as rail supply need to remain world leaders.

The European rail supply industry is responsible for approx. 650,000 jobs, and according to the World Rail Market Study 2024 the global rail market is worth €201.8bn. It is forecast to increase at the end of the decade to €240.8bn – growth of 3% per year. However, this forecast growth must also be safeguarded through appropriate legislative measures.

Comments from UNIFE 

On the Clean Industrial Deal
“We support action by the Commission to drive the Clean Industrial Deal, as it is essential to ensure European industry is given the space and support to pave the way for carbon neutrality.”

“The rail supply industry has a strong footprint in Europe, be it for industrial innovation or production. However, coherence of the framework must be ensured and the competitiveness of downstream industries such as ours guaranteed if we are to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.” 

On Public Procurement
“UNIFE strongly welcomes the acknowledgement from the European Commission that public procurement is a powerful instrument to support jobs and value creation in the EU.”
“The rail supply industry should be clearly prioritised as a strategic European sector when it comes to the public procurement reforms confirmed in the Clean Industrial Deal.”
“We have been strongly advocating key reforms to ensure that European public investments and associated tenders widen the application of non-price criteria as well as European preference. Crucially, this approach has to be applied to the subject matter of the tenders.”

On Company Reporting Requirements
“A significant amount of data points needs to be provided at European level, which can go into the several hundred for some companies. This is not sustainable for SMEs, and can hamper our competitiveness if these requirements do not effectively steer investments towards clean industries such as rail supply.” 

“Plans to reduce these burdens – particularly on Taxonomy – are welcome, however we support the European Commission in achieving the right balance between reaching sustainability goals and boosting competitiveness.”

On Sustainable Financing 
“We need to create paths to ensure further financial investment in the rail supply industry, and we see promising developments on the mobilisation of additional InvestEU financing, the simplification of State Aid rules, the creation of an Industrial Decarbonisation Bank and use of European Investment Bank instruments. Now, we need to make sure that rail can play its role and benefit from these new financing initiatives to boost the competitiveness of our industry and sector.”

“However, as much as we understand and respect other sectors need to make critical changes, the European rail supply industry is only 0.4% of Europe’s transport emissions and is a ‘safer bet’ when it comes to investing in Europe’s future.”

On Circular Economy
“The EU developing a New Circular Economy Act and reducing the overdependencies on third countries for materials is a positive, as the rail supply industry has already begun practices and discussions about making this transition.”