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At the recent Antwerp European Industry Summit, many industrial stakeholders voiced concern that persistently high energy prices remain the most significant drag on Europe’s economy. High energy prices are forcing existing installations to cease operating and are compromising future investment decisions, undermining Europe’s electrification and broader competitiveness objectives. The EU’s strategy relies on long-term, structural solutions: expanding renewables, reinforcing electricity grids, and improving market integration. As Mario Draghi also opined, these are the correct long-term measures, but they do not relieve the short-term strain that energy-intensive industries are currently experiencing.

In June 2025, the European Commission adopted the Clean Industrial State Aid Framework (CISAF). Section 4.5 allows Member States to offer targeted compensation to industrial consumers facing high electricity costs. It was designed as a temporary tool to address the short-term emergency. Yet several Member States and industry voices say that the conditions attached to it may be too restrictive, limiting its effectiveness. This has prompted calls for a revision of the framework, along with concrete suggestions for how it could be made more effective.

Meanwhile, several Member States have developed their own support schemes to shield their industries from high electricity costs. These include large-scale innovative initiatives such as Italy’s “Energy Release 2.0” scheme. These instruments deserve to be assessed at the European level, in order to assess whether they could form the cornerstone of a common European approach to addressing energy-intensive industries’ challenges.

Join this Euractiv Event to discuss the application of measures to support industrial electricity prices, to assess whether the existing CISAF framework works and whether it needs to be improved, and to explore what additional or alternative tools could support industrial consumers facing excessively high electricity prices while safeguarding competitiveness and advancing Europe’s electrification.


Questions to be discussed include:

- How has Section 4.5 CISAF been implemented so far, and what obstacles have emerged in practice?

- Are the current eligibility criteria and conditionalities preventing effective uptake across Member States?

- What lessons can be drawn from national initiatives such as -Italy’s “Energy Release 2.0”?

- Is there a need for a more common European instrument to support industries and protect competitiveness?

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