The European Union has launched a subsidy investigation into Chinese wind turbine companies, in an effort to shield domestic industry from competition posed by cheaper products.
Comment: Cheaper products from China, but not inferior as in the past.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief, said on Tuesday the probe would examine whether Chinese firms participating in wind parks across Europe may have benefited from state support from Beijing. The probe will look into conditions for the development of wind parks in Spain, Greece, France, Romania and Bulgaria.
Vestager's announcement comes just days after the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, opened a separate subsidies probe into two Chinese consortiums bidding for a solar-farm contract in Romania.
"We saw the playbook for how China came to dominate the solar panel industry," Vestager stated during a speech in Princeton, New Jersey, citing "massive subsidies for domestic suppliers."
Comment: The EU lost the competition in the solar panel industry as it suffered the blowback from cutting off cheap Russian gas and closing down the nuclear energy sector. An example is the Swiss solar panel producer who is closing down a solar plant in Freiburg, Germany and moving it to the US where energy costs a lot less and where the US has offered massive tax credits to lure EU industry to resettle there. The US scheme is called "The inflation reduction Act", with the hidden aim to profit from and hasten the de-industrialisation of Europe.
Comment: The EU is following the lead from the US hegemon and is blaming China and/or Russia for all their problems. The EU forgets that China also can play this game which could have severe consequences for EU businesses in China.
The EU does not look inward to see how they can make it more innovative, competitive and support entrepreneurs. Instead it likes to legislate, control and micromanage its citizens and thus has turned into what someone recently coined as a lenocracy.
Beyond Lenocracy