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Updated Position Paper – The Future Automotive Partnership – Joint Undertaking

In response to the Call for Evidence on the Single Basic Act, ACEA, CLEPA, and EUCAR have updated their Position Paper. We welcome the European Commission’s announcements in the Industrial Action Plan for the European automotive sector[1] to strengthen its competitiveness. This plan includes establishing a dedicated Automotive Joint Undertaking (JU). We support this initiative as a strategic instrument to enhance the competitiveness, technological sovereignty, and sustainability of the European automotive sector, fully in line with the Competitiveness Compass[2] strategy.

As leading investors in research and innovation, the automotive sector highlights that closing the innovation gap is essential for global competitiveness. We must accelerate innovation from research to scale-up, prioritise impact, and facilitate large-scale innovation initiatives with substantial industrial participation and leadership. With the proposed Joint Undertaking (JU)[3] we will align industry resources and de-risk investments with public funding across automotive value chains throughout Europe.

The future Automotive Partnership (Automotive JU) must be instrumental in implementing strategically coordinated efforts rapidly to generate impact on an unprecedented scale. As the largest public-private R&I initiative in the automotive industry, the Automotive JU will boost global competitiveness while addressing societal challenges that will benefit users and society. The objectives are:

  • Accelerate Automotive Innovation: reduce time to market by 50%.
  • Foster Digital Innovation: foster innovation in digital technologies, enhancing competitiveness through AI, SDV, in-vehicle computing, connectivity, automation, and data-driven solutions.
  • Integrate Sustainability: integrate sustainability, affordability and environmental performance throughout the value chain, addressing carbon neutrality, LCA, circular economy and resilience.
  • Increase Research Capacity: enhance R&I capacity for competitive automotive value chains throughout Europe.
  • A structured bridge between FP10 and the ECF, enabling validated innovations to access scale-up financing. The Automotive JU will align resources for research, innovation and deployment in the automotive sector across the value chain towards a shared vision and foster collaboration between stakeholders in a growing ecosystem for innovation by implementing a long-term R&I (SRIDA) agenda.
  • The governance of the Automotive JU must embody agility and efficiency with minimal bureaucracy to accelerate innovation through high-level steering from industry leaders, the European Commission and potentially also Member States.
  • The execution of the Automotive JU programme needs simplification and relentless efforts to reduce administrative burdens by aligning with industrial realities and harmonised reporting.
  • Mixed funding sources should by no means lead to further complexity, fragmentation and delayed processes. Further, different funding rates across Member States will lead to fragmentation and risk an imbalanced competition within the single market. Single sources and one set of rules are preferable.
  • On the high value of in-kind contributions versus mandatory direct financial contributions from private-side actors in the automotive sector: Co-investment should be mainly in the form of in-kind contributions without any obligation to make a financial contribution. Collaborative projects with industry lead to an internalisation of knowledge and strengthen collaboration networks. Therefore, in-kind contributions are highly valued as this industry investment forges a win-win situation for all involved partners from industry, research partners and start-ups with direct impact. The financial contribution obligation would disincentivise industrial participation, leading to less collaborative R&I, which does not significantly strengthen the EU innovation ecosystem.

A strong European automotive industry that creates value for Europe, provides jobs and contributes to the economy.

The automotive industry is vital to the European economy, providing jobs and driving growth. It contributes approximately €1 trillion to the EU’s gross domestic product. Nevertheless, the industry is undergoing a drastic transformation, and the US and China are challenging European competitiveness.

We therefore propose to the European Commission, the EU Parliament, and the Member States to continue working with us to establish this Automotive Joint Undertaking, with a launch planned for early 2028.

[1] COM/2025/95, Industrial Action Plan for the European Automotive Sector

[2] COM/2025/30, A Competitiveness Compass for the EU

[3]  Without prejudice to the next MFF proposal’s package

The updated Future Automotive Joint Undertaking Position Paper.pdf