Policy to preserve a strategic EU industry

9.1.2020

Question for written answer E-000114/2020
to the Commission
Rule 138
Izaskun Bilbao Barandica (Renew), Jan-Christoph Oetjen (Renew), Inma Rodríguez-Piñero (S&D)

The EU’s maritime technology industry includes 300 shipyards and 22 000 system and equipment suppliers generating 1 million jobs. These companies produce the most innovative offshore vessels and assets on the market and are crucial to the EU’s Green Deal and the decarbonisation of maritime transport.

While the sector outside the EU is considered strategic and is protected (in the USA, Canada, China and Korea), there is no mechanism or regulation in the EU that takes the sector’s specific needs and characteristics into account.

On the global market, the EU industry is not competing on a level playing field and is at a disadvantage given that it the only sector which cannot use WTO instruments to protect itself from unfair competition practices.

Without concrete sectoral measures, the EU may lose its maritime industry. The industry, trade unions, regional authorities (the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions) and some EU institutions (the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee) are calling on the Commission to urgently adopt an industrial strategy for the sector.

• 1.Is the new Commission aware of the urgent need to establish framework conditions for the preservation of this strategic EU industry?
• 2.Will the it adopt specific measures to support the maritime technology industry?