A growing public push to loosen Made in EU requirements is playing out across Italian media, driven by journalists, commentators and industry associations calling for fewer restrictions on cheaper Chinese technology.
At the center of the debate is Transition 5.0, Italy’s plan to incentivize business investment in digital and energy transformation.
Framed primarily as a question of costs and the speed of investment, the push carries a much more political stake: putting price back at the center of the equation would mean reversing Rome’s national interest and part of the de-risking pursued in recent years by the Italian government, in line with the European Union’s broader strategic direction.
Why it matters. The stakes run deeper than de-risking. This is also about whether Italy intends to defend its own industrial base in technologies that will underpin the next economic cycle.
- Returning to price as the overriding criterion risks using Italian and European public money to strengthen Chinese manufacturers that have already secured dominant positions, further accelerating the erosion of Europe’s remaining manufacturing capacity.
The lesson extends beyond China as a geopolitical competitor. Even if Beijing were Europe’s closest ally (it’s not: it is a “systemic rivalry”) and Chinese companies posed no security concerns whatsoever, allowing a strategic industrial sector to become overwhelmingly dependent on a single foreign manufacturing ecosystem would still be bad industrial policy.
- The strategic dimension makes that industrial problem more serious. As the energy system becomes more digitalized, dependence can also become vulnerability: operational data, software and remote updates, supplier concentration and potential entry points into critical infrastructure.
What’s behind the push? It is difficult to determine how much of this pressure simply reflects the interests of Italian industry and how much it may overlap with — or be encouraged by — Chinese interests.
- But the mood of what increasingly looks like a campaign is clear: restrictions on Chinese technology are portrayed as an obstacle to investment, while the reasons those safeguards were introduced in the first place receive far less attention.
- The debate has found particular resonance in the business press, including Il Sole 24 Ore, traditionally attentive to the case for trade — and often, by extension, openness toward Beijing — and which has previously provided space for content that also fits within the broader dissemination of China’s strategic narratives.
The big picture. The paradox is that this pressure is emerging just as Italian and European policies are beginning to produce results in the opposite direction.
- The Meloni government has progressively introduced requirements designed to prevent transition incentives from automatically turning into publicly subsidized demand for Chinese technology. In solar, that means trying to preserve space for European manufacturing in a market where China’s scale has already pushed much of the European competition aside.
- The 3Sun Gigafactory in Catania — backed by more than €1 billion in investment and one of the few remaining large-scale European manufacturing facilities in the sector — is a concrete example of the capacity those policies seek to preserve.
The catch. Critics have an economically powerful argument: Chinese technology costs less. Loosening the requirements could therefore make deploying new renewable capacity cheaper. But that is precisely where both de-risking and industrial policy begin.
- If Europe still chooses the cheapest option every time industrial resilience costs more than dependence, it will never reduce its exposure. Instead, it will end up using public money to buy more and more from the very industrial ecosystem it says it wants to become less dependent on.
The precedent. Europe has already learned a version of this lesson in the automotive sector.
- For years, China was a hugely profitable market for German carmakers. But as Chinese manufacturers moved up the value chain and took the lead in electric vehicles, the relationship changed: German brands’ combined market share in China fell from 24% in 2019 to around 15% in 2024.
- The German industry’s problems have multiple causes, but the lesson is clear: commercial convenience abroad is no substitute for preserving technological leadership and industrial capacity at home.
And there’s more. The issue is not only industrial.
- ECFR draws an important distinction between solar panels, which are essentially passive technologies, and inverters: grid-connected devices capable of transmitting and receiving information and potentially providing entry points into smart grids. Yet both are part of the same energy ecosystem, whose growing connectivity creates vulnerabilities.
- EUISS has also raised concerns about Chinese inverters, vendor concentration and remote access to energy systems.
- The NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence brought dependence on Chinese clean tech squarely into the energy and cyber-security debate in 2025: the digitalization of solar and wind increases both the amount of available data and the potential attack surface.
The China factor. There’s no conclusive public evidence of systematic transfers of European energy data to China. Therefore, it’s incorrect to claim that Chinese technology automatically grants Beijing access to European grids.
- However, China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires organizations and citizens to support state intelligence activities when requested. This doesn’t prove or imply systematic data transfers, but it’s relevant to the overall risk assessment when combined with remote updates, software integration, and supplier concentration.
- The issue is the combination of technical capabilities, software, remote updates, supplier concentration, and a legal system that requires cooperation in intelligence matters.
- De-risking and protection of national interest are about managing vulnerabilities before proving exploitation.
The bottom line. Italy’s seemingly technical debate over Made in EU requirements under Transition 5.0 therefore conceals a broader strategic choice.
- Italy has begun reducing a dependence built over years of Chinese industrial dominance. The pressure to return to economic convenience as the overriding criterion paradoxically suggests that the policy is having an impact: if the restrictions were irrelevant, there would be little reason to push for their removal.
- But the case for preserving European manufacturing does not ultimately depend on whether China is considered a partner, competitor or security threat. Industrial resilience is a Italian national and European interest in its own right.
- Transition 5.0 therefore poses a simple test: is public money intended only to buy the cheapest technology available today, or should it also help ensure that Italy, Europe can still produce strategic technologies tomorrow?
- That is also the real test of de-risking. Returning to Chinese products every time they are cheaper does not reduce dependence. It rebuilds it — while further weakening the industrial alternative Europe will need if that dependence ever becomes a problem.
