
LEVA-EU: The Competitiveness Compass must unlock the competitiveness and economic potential of the European LEV industry
03/02/2025
3 minutes
LEVA-EU welcomes the European Commission’s publication of its Competitiveness Compass, which provides a clear strategic framework to guide its work in the coming five years.
As the only trade association in Europe that works exclusively for light electric vehicles (LEV), LEVA-EU identifies with the Commission’s goal to “nurture Europe’s innate strengths, harness its resources and remove the barriers at European and national level.”
We fully agree that “Europe must be the place where tomorrow’s technologies, services, and clean products are invented, manufactured and marketed, as we stay the course to climate neutrality.”
We strongly believe that light electric vehicles are the cornerstone of sustainable urban mobility, vital in achieving the EU’s climate and competitiveness goals. Yet our 65 member companies are facing too much regulatory uncertainty and undue administrative burden to be able to invest and innovate.
Like what the European Commission will soon embark on with the automotive industry, LEVA-EU seeks a dialogue with the Commission to address similar challenges around “innovation and leadership in future technologies, clean transition and decarbonisation, access to globally competitive inputs and security of supply, labour and skills, global fair trade and competition, regulatory streamlining and implementation and boosting of demand.”
Notably absent in the Compass, we request the Commission to fulfil its 2024 recommendation to propose an LEV regulatory framework that brings all LEV segments under a harmonised regulation, in consultation with the LEV industry.
LEVA-EU shares the opinion that trade is a key driver for Europe’s prosperity. But its pursuit to reduce dependency should not turn into protectionism that cuts off the necessary supplies that our companies currently need to grow and innovate. We feel that priority should be placed on Member States to strengthen their market surveillance capacity to prevent illegal products from entering the EU.
We laud the Commission’s plan to remove barriers to the Single Market and make standard-setting processes faster and more accessible, in particular for SMEs and startups. We add that many of our members are SMEs, and current regulatory requirements and standardisation processes do not cater to their rapid innovation cycles. This has resulted in innovative LEV solutions not being able to be brought into the market.
As mentioned in the Compass, “the window of opportunity is narrow.” We look forward to working closely in the coming months with the Commission, the Parliament and Member States to unlock the inherent competitiveness and economic potential of the European LEV industry.
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