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Critical finished products and societal benefits – How can Europe strengthen resilience where industrial capacity meets everyday needs?

Recent debates on Europe’s economic security and competitiveness have largely focused on access to critical raw materials. However, resilience is often tested at the level of finished products: the essential goods that directly enable mobility, energy storage, digital infrastructure, healthcare, housing and public services. Shortages or bottlenecks in these products can have immediate economic and societal consequences for citizens, businesses and public authorities.

The European Commission has introduced the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA), establishing the concept of ‘essential goods’, which entered into force at the end of May this year. In parallel, the EU Preparedness Union Strategy aims to enhance the Union’s ability to prevent, anticipate and respond to emerging threats and crises. Yet, despite these advances, some stakeholders claim the framework remains incomplete, saying it lacks a robust industrial dimension capable of supporting these objectives over the long term.

Against this backdrop, the EU’s evolving industrial policy framework, including the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) and the broader competitiveness agenda, increasingly seeks to strengthen Europe’s capacity to manufacture, scale and deploy strategically important products within the Single Market. Looking beyond inputs alone raises questions about how finished products with high societal value, strong sustainability performance and significant European manufacturing footprints should be identified, supported and prioritised.

Tyres illustrate these dynamics at the finished product level. As a core component of road mobility, they underpin passenger transport, logistics, agriculture, healthcare and emergency services. Better performing tyres can contribute to improved road safety and reduced fuel consumption, delivering measurable CO2 reductions. At the same time, the tyre sector faces challenges linked to global competition, regulatory requirements and energy costs, prompting debate on how public procurement and consumer incentives could better encourage the uptake of best graded products that deliver societal and environmental benefits.

Similar questions arise for other critical finished products that are largely manufactured in Europe and central to the green and digital transitions. Batteries and semiconductors, for instance, are essential to electrified mobility, energy storage and digital technologies, while also raising issues around sustainability, supply-chain resilience and industrial scale-up. Examining these products together allows for a broader discussion on how EU industrial policy can align resilience, competitiveness, sustainability and social value across sectors.

Join this Euractiv Conference to discuss critical finished products and their societal benefits, and how EU industrial policy can strengthen resilience, sustainability and competitiveness at the point where industrial capacity meets citizens’ everyday needs. Questions to be addressed include:

- How should the EU define and prioritise critical finished products alongside critical raw materials within the Industrial Accelerator Act?
- What lessons can be drawn from sectors such as tyres, batteries and semiconductors when assessing societal value, sustainability performance and supply-chain resilience?
- How can public procurement and consumer incentives support the uptake of high-performance, sustainable finished products manufactured in Europe?
- What role can regulatory coherence, innovation and competitiveness play in securing Europe’s long-term capacity to produce essential finished goods?

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