The European Union and the US will agree to favor European electric car manufacturers

Important joint step by the United States and the European Union in trade matters. Ursula von der Leyen y Joe Biden They agreed this Friday to negotiate a trade agreement on minerals with which to favor European companies that manufacture electric cars.

The president of the European Commission herself was in charge of announcing it after meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with the US president.

“I think it is very important for us that we join forces on this issue,” said Von Der Leyen. “Because this is a crucial issue for our future, to fight climate change and limit global warming. So it’s important that we join forces, that we are complementary, that we boost the respective cleantech industries on both sides.”

The president of the Commission also confirmed that she had found, together with Biden, some “solutions” to the tensions that have existed in recent months in the transatlantic relationship, after the approval in the United States of the so-called Inflation Reduction Law (IRA, in English).

similar treatment

It should be remembered that said law includes an aid package of 370,000 million dollars (about 350,000 million euros) to promote the energy transition, offering tax breaks to those companies that manufacture electric vehicles with components made in North America —United States, Canada and Mexico.

The agreement now agreed could boost the use of European minerals for the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries. The pact would give European companies similar treatment to the one that Mexicans, Canadians and Americans receive right now.

Likewise, the European Union could stop depending on China in the increasingly important sector of this type of vehicle. Negotiations to reach an official agreement, the parties report, will begin “immediately.”

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