European Industry Forum 2026

- How should “European” production be defined in a globalized economy?

- How can policy capture the full multiplier and spillover effects generated across complex industrial ecosystems?

- How do we design rules that are both future-proof and flexible enough to strengthen resilience and technological sovereignty across strategic sectors – from aerospace to advanced manufacturing?

- Industrial resilience starts upstream—with reliable access to critical materials, components, and technologies. How can Europe ensure reliable access to critical raw materials and advanced technologies for key industrial sectors, while strategic raw material industries struggle due to high energy prices, regulatory complexity, and permitting challenges?

- How can the new Critical Raw Materials Centre and other EU initiatives (Advanced Materials Act, Industrial Accelerator Act) help Europe build autonomy in clean tech, energy, and defence supply chains while keeping markets efficient and open?

- To what extent can joint purchasing, stockpiling, and improved circularity - including recycling of critical raw materials - reduce dependencies? What are the practical limits and trade-offs in terms of cost, scalability, and industrial competitiveness?

- With global trade tensions and shifting alliances, how can Europe and its partners realign trade and investment to turn uncertainty into strategic opportunity?

- How can the EU’s evolving trade strategy—anchored in the new EU–US Trade Framework and free trade agreements with Mercosur, India, and ASEAN—support industrial growth while protecting strategic interests?

- Can “open but not naïve” trade deliver a resilient and fair industrial order?

- How quickly can European industry shift from peacetime to wartime production, and what legal, financial, and regulatory obstacles would slow that transition today?

- Are current EU instruments (SAFE, EDIRPA, ASAP, the Defence Industry Programme) designed for incremental resilience—or for rapid mobilisation under war-level demand?

- What level of demand aggregation and long-term procurement guarantees are needed to justify permanent scale-up of defence production across Member States?

- Europe’s automotive industry remains the beating heart of its manufacturing ecosystem. In a decade of electrification and digitalisation, how can Europe’s policy mix—from support for small affordable cars to the Battery Manufacturing Scheme and Social Leasing initiatives—keep the automotive sector globally competitive, innovative, and sustainable?

- How should Europe reassess the 2035 ban on internal combustion engines to balance industrial competitiveness, consumer affordability, and climate credibility?

- What tools should Europe deploy to counter China’s state-backed automotive and battery advantage while remaining compliant with WTO rules and open-market principles?

- Europe leads in innovation but lags in scale—what specific financing and policy mechanisms are needed to move clean technologies from pilot to industrial deployment within this decade?

- What are the key opportunities and challenges for scaling next-generation energy technologies such as fusion, green hydrogen, and advanced energy materials in Europe?

- How can Europe ensure that clean tech investment translates into domestic industrial capacity and jobs, rather than value creation shifting to the US or China?

- As a new major energy crisis looms, is Europe any more resilient than in 2022? What is the single most critical infrastructure investment Europe is not making today?

- What are the key bottlenecks to modernising and integrating Europe’s power grids, and what must change in the next 2–3 years to unlock cross-border energy flows at scale?