Nissan welcomes UK’s inclusion in EU’s ‘Made-in-Europe’ benefits

Nissan welcomes UK’s inclusion in EU’s ‘Made-in-Europe’ benefits

Automotive News Europe — 2026-03-06

Automotive Industry

Nissan welcomed a European Commission decision to treat U.K.-built vehicles as “equivalent to EU origin” for some incentives under the EU’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), easing concerns that electric models produced in Britain could be excluded from support schemes.

The Japanese automaker builds vehicles for the European market at its factory in Sunderland, northeast England, and had warned that EVs built there — including the next-generation Leaf crossover — might not qualify for EU incentives tied to local-content rules that are part of the IAA.

The European Commission has now clarified that third-party countries outside the EU such as the U.K. will not be excluded if they have a trade agreement with the EU.

Vehicles built in the U.K. will be eligible for benefits such as government procurement programs and national EV subsidies linked to the IAA.

Nissan said the clarification recognizes the role of key partners in Europe’s automotive supply chain.

“We are pleased the Commission has addressed industry concerns and recognized how important partners are to the EU supply chain,” Nissan said in a statement emailed to Automotive News Europe.

Nissan exports about 70 percent of the vehicles produced in Sunderland — including the Qashqai and Juke crossovers — with the majority shipped to EU markets.

The automaker has struggled to maintain profitability in Europe in recent years, and the Sunderland factory is operating at less than half its annual capacity of about 500,000 vehicles.

Nissan urged the EU to go further by applying the same treatment to other support mechanisms, including proposed incentives to encourage corporate fleets to buy EVs and a planned small-car “supercredit” aimed at encouraging automakers to produce and sell smaller, more affordable EVs in Europe.

Excluding U.K.-built vehicles from those programs would “create confusion and add unnecessary complexity for the industry,” Nissan said.

“A simple solution would be to apply the ‘equivalent to Union origin’ rules across all types of EV support, which would be in line with the EU’s goal of making regulations easier to understand and apply,” the automaker said.

IAA aims to strengthen European manufacturing

The IAA is intended to bolster regional manufacturing capacity and reduce reliance on overseas suppliers. Brussels wants manufacturing to account for 20 percent of the EU’s economic output by 2035, up from about 14 percent today.

Automakers have reacted cautiously to the proposed framework, warning that stricter local-content rules could raise production costs in Europe. Manufacturers often rely on components sourced from outside the EU, where costs can be lower, or from established facilities in countries such as the U.K.

The British government has been pushing for closer alignment with EU industrial policy since the U.K. left the bloc in 2020, which placed U.K. factories operated by Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW’s Mini and Toyota outside the EU’s single market.

The SMMT industry association says 57 percent of British vehicle production was exported to the EU last year.