The European Commission launched an investigation on Wednesday to assess whether the EU needs to impose tariffs to protect European consumers from cheap Chinese electric vehicle producers.
“Global markets are now flooded with cheaper electric cars. And their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
She stressed the importance of electric vehicles to the EU’s ambitious environmental objectives, but it should apparently only be done with expensive ones.
“So I can announce today that the Commission is launching an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China. Europe is open to competition. Not for a race to the bottom,” von der Leyen added.
China is estimated to have sold about 5.67 million electric vehicles in 2022, more than half of the global total.