Statement opposing trade defence measures

The signatories to this statement, 433 companies, among which 18 manufacturers, 28 national associations and research institutes, from 26 Member States, are united in a clear call.

There must be no trade defence measures on solar PV products entering Europe.  

The EU goal of achieving 42.5% renewable energy by 2030, including a solar target of 600 GWac by 2030, will require significant acceleration of the deployment of solar power in the European Union (“EU”). Imposing trade defence measures on solar PV products will only slow deployment down.  

According to our EU Solar Jobs Report 2023, the solar sector represented 648,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the EU in 2022. The majority of these jobs (84%) are linked to activities in the deployment of solar PV systems.  Without major barriers to further growth, including from trade restrictions, the solar sector is set to employ around 1 million people in 2025 and 1.2 million people in 2027. Any reduction in available solar PV products, due to trade defence measures, would certainly negatively impact European employment and put many local jobs at risk.  

We fully support and are committed to the re-shoring of European solar manufacturing, including the EU’s target of reshoring solar manufacturing capacity to a minimum of 30 GW by 2025 across the solar PV supply chain. However, we caution that it is vital to choose the right tools to make this happen.  

The EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan must make sure that the solar supply chain is de-risked and manufacturing along the whole supply chain is re-shored to the EU. However, launching an anti-dumping and/or anti-subsidy investigation and imposing duties on imports of solar PV products will be detrimental to the entire European solar value chain.   

How do we know that this will be the case? Only 5 years ago, anti-dumping and countervailing duties on solar panels imported from China, Taiwan, and Malaysia were abolished. These duties had negative consequences, which taught us a painful lesson. Solar jobs, project investment, and solar deployment severely declined during the period of application of these trade defence measures and led to an increase in costs to our customers and consumers.    

In the interest of the EU’s economic prosperity and the future growth of the EU’s solar sector, we call on the European Commission to avoid launching a trade defence investigation which could potentially lead to the imposition of tariffs on imported solar PV products.   

At a time when we need much more – not less – solar energy, we, the signatories, instead urge the European Commission to look at constructive actions to provide long-term and sustainable support to the European solar industry:  

• Adjust the EU State Aid framework (the Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework) to allow Member States to support running costs of factories – i.e. opex;  
• Mandate specific resilience auctions a.o. within Member States under a swiftly-adopted EU Net-Zero Industry Act; and  
• Set up an EU-level financing instrument dedicated to supporting EU solar PV manufacturing projects.  

We, the signatories, of this statement make an urgent appeal to not open a trade defence investigation or impose trade deference measures. To do so would cause injury to the vast majority of the EU solar sector to the detriment of the EU’s green energy transition at a critical moment in time.