🇪🇺 ✍ Cleantech for Nordics joined Cleantech for Europe, together with Cleantech for Iberia, Cleantech for France, Cleantech for Italy, Tech for Net Zero and Cleantech for Baltics, in signing a joint letter to the European Commission on the Revised State Aid rules implementing the political ambitions of the Clean Industrial Deal.

With the next EU budget not kicking in before 2028, State Aid is currently the most important public tool to de-risk the scale of cleantech manufacturing in Europe. The current draft of the Cleantech & Industrial Scheme for Aid Framework (CISAF) includes welcome steps forward—but also leaves key gaps that risk slowing down Europe’s industrial momentum.

Here’s what is needed:
🔹 Allow Member States to design transparent, predictable, ex-ante production-based schemes for cleantech manufacturing.
🔹 Higher aid volumes and intensities—current levels are far below what’s needed to de-risk cleantech manufacturing and industrial decarbonization, and are a far cry from what international competitors are providing.
🔹Simplified and faster approval processes. Lengthy, lump-sum, project-by-project aid approvals remain a major barrier for scale-ups and are not bankable for SMEs, entrepreneurs and financiers — not predictable, transparent, or fast enough. This is where simplification could make a huge difference for SMEs!
🔹 Ensure CISAF effectively supports EU’s net-zero, energy resilience, and technology sovereignty objectives
🔹 Expand the scope of guarantees to explicitly cover manufacturing guarantees, technology performance guarantees and guarantees for power purchase agreements, as well as in very specific cases some minimum of-take guarantees

📣 We need to make it easier for cleantech companies to succeed, and we need policy frameworks that unlock scale, speed, investment and bankability. It’s time for Europe to go beyond risk avoidance—and start truly backing its industrial future. 🚀