Key takeaways

  • ‘Made in Europe’ must be more than a label: it must guarantee quality jobs, fair wages and strong workers’ rights
  • Public funding, procurement and incentives should be conditional on social, employment and environmental standards
  • Well designed local content policies can strengthen strategic autonomy and secure industrial value chains in Europe
  • Strong governance, monitoring and sanctions are essential to prevent loopholes, social dumping and offshoring
  • Trade unions must play a central role in shaping, monitoring and enforcing ‘Made in Europe’ policies

European industry is at a crossroads. Decades of offshoring and cost driven strategies have weakened Europe’s industrial base, hollowed out communities and left workers exposed to restructuring and job losses. At the same time, growing geopolitical instability has turned long standing dependencies into strategic vulnerabilities—particularly for critical materials, components and clean technologies.

Against this backdrop, the European Commission is increasingly promoting a ‘Made in Europe’ approach as part of its industrial policy toolkit. In our new position paper, industriAll Europe welcomes this shift—but makes clear that the success of ‘Made in Europe’ will depend on how it is defined and enforced.

For industriAll Europe, ‘Made in Europe’ must stand for quality employment and value creation in Europe. It must go beyond simple assembly or geographical criteria and be anchored in enforceable social conditionalities whenever public money, subsidies or market incentives are involved. This includes respect for collective bargaining, fair wages, safe working conditions, investment in skills, and meaningful social dialogue across value chains.

Well designed local content policies can play a key role in rebuilding Europe’s industrial capacity. They can create predictable domestic demand, boost investment and innovation, strengthen strategic autonomy, and help ensure that the benefits of the green and digital transitions are fairly shared. However, our position paper also underlines that poorly designed policies risk higher costs, legal challenges and new forms of value leakage.

This is why we call for a balanced, sector specific ‘Made in Europe’ strategy, with clear thresholds, transparency and flexibility where justified—but without creating loopholes. Measuring local content must reflect real economic value, including manufacturing, R&D and strategic components, rather than allowing tokenistic assembly operations.

Crucially, ‘Made in Europe’ will only deliver if it is backed by strong governance. Independent monitoring, effective enforcement, access to information for workers’ representatives and meaningful sanctions—such as clawbacks of public funds—are essential to prevent abuse and ensure public accountability.

At a time when Europe is mobilising unprecedented public resources for industrial transformation, industriAll Europe’s message is clear: public investment must serve the public interest. ‘Made in Europe’ must become a genuine tool for re industrialisation with quality jobs, social cohesion and long term resilience at its core—not a hollow slogan.

To launch the position paper, on 20 April industriAll Europe and the Friedrich‑Ebert‑Stiftung (FES) co‑hosted a high‑level roundtable bringing together Enrico Letta; Bertrand L’Huillier, Head of Cabinet to Executive Vice‑President Stéphane Séjourné; MEPs Jens Geier and Bas Eickhout; FEPS President Nicolas Schmit; ETUC Confederal Secretary Ludovic Voet; and Madeline Perron from the Veblen Institute. The discussion focused on how local content requirements can contribute to building a worker‑centred European industrial policy.


Position Paper 'Made in Europe' an Industrial Worker Perspective EN  FR  DE