EU commissioner questions added value of Chinese car manufacturer in Barcelona

The European Commissioner for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, Stéphane Séjourné, has questioned the added value of having a Chinese car manufacturer's warehouse in Barcelona, such as the Ebro/Chery one.

He believes that having such factories in the European Union does not add any "growth" to the Union's production levels, as he told media outlets, including the Catalan News Agency (ACN), in Strasbourg this week.

The head of industrial strategy said that "a factory outside of Barcelona where a car is assembled with all parts made in China creates low-quality workplaces and does not add any value to the European industry."

Séjourné believes that the way to promote European production would be to leave aside the tariff war and look for new deals with Beijing.

"We must be smarter with our relationship with China," he said. "The solution is not to keep tariffs," as he believes there are other ways, despite the US pressuring the EU to impose taxes on China to force Russia to stop the war in Ukraine.

The EU and China have been battling a tariff war for years. In the last episode, a 62% tariff on European pork was imposed as a reprisal for tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

Séjourné considers it a problem that a European manufacturing industry is assembling Chinese materials, and he questions the path the Spanish car manufacturing industry is following.

"The model we normally see in Spain is often not the way to go, as European companies would not grow in production," the commissioner, from French President Emmanuel Macron's party, told media outlets.

Barcelona is home to the factory of the Chinese automaker Chery, which shares the site with the EV Motors company. Both are set in the former Nissan warehouse in the Barcelona Zona Franca port area, and many of the workers are former staff of the Japanese company.

Chery is one of the main car manufacturers in China, with over 2.6 million cars sold in 2024. During a recent trip to China, Catalan president Salvador Illa said that the company would open a research and development center in Cornellà de Llobregat.