FT writes "EU’s ‘Made in Europe’ policy spooks British industry"

"When UK PM Burnham met with French President Macron earlier this month, top of the agenda were fears that British industry risks becoming collateral damage from Brussels' new Made in Europe policy".

Preference policies of this kind, where a large bloc tilts procurement or subsidy eligibility toward domestically produced content, have historically been the friction point in the EU's trade relationships with third countries, and non-member neighbours with deeply integrated supply chains have consistently been the first to raise the collateral-damage complaint. The mechanism to isolate is rules-of-origin and local-content thresholds: the question for UK industry is whether British inputs count as qualifying content or are treated as foreign, and past episodes of this type have shown the difference between the two is the difference between continued access and gradual exclusion from EU-facing supply chains. The reporting itself is notable for putting the issue at head-of-government level rather than leaving it to trade ministers, which in comparable disputes has tended to precede either a negotiated carve-out or a formal retaliation track. The actors' prior form matters here: Brussels has a record of softening such schemes for aligned partners after industry lobbying, while keeping the core preference intact. Worth watching are the technical annexes and any origin or cumulation language rather than the political framing, whether UK industry bodies move from complaint to specific asks, and whether the Commission signals a bilateral fix or points London toward existing trade-agreement machinery.