When we talk about European strategic autonomy, we are not talking about manufacturing in Europe everything we consume. That would amount to pursuing an autarky that is impossible, costly, inefficient and impracticable. Strategic autonomy means preserving the freedom to decide when a crisis, a supply disruption, or a change in the surrounding conditions tests the continuity of a system. Applied to the battery world, it requires determining which links in the supply chain we consider acceptable to depend on diversified markets and reliable partners, and in which we must be able to produce, operate, adapt or recover without being subjected to external anchoring.
“Strategic autonomy means preserving the freedom to decide when a crisis, a supply disruption or a change in the surrounding conditions tests the continuity of a system”
The battery has long ceased to be merely another component of the electric vehicle. Today it forms part of a broad cross-cutting infrastructure, capable of supporting electric mobility, but also of balancing grids with an increasing presence of renewable energies, stabilizing consumption in factories and buildings, protecting sensitive industrial processes and providing an immediate response to data centers, hospitals, telecommunications and defense facilities. Not all of these applications require the same chemistry, duration or energy density. They share, however, a common industrial and logistical base: processed materials, chemical processes, cells, power electronics, ‘software’, integration, maintenance and recycling.
Europe regulated the final objective before securing the industrial route
The European Union clearly set the course of electrification, but it did so before ensuring a competitive value chain across enough links. This does not invalidate the necessary energy transition, even though it reveals a sequencing problem. Regulation, which can steer demand, cannot by itself create an industry capable of producing with quality, volume and competitive cost.
The Chinese advantage allows measuring the strategic and technological distance. By the end of 2025, China accounted for more than 80% of the world’s nominal lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity. Battery packs cost there, on average, about 35% less than in Europe. That gap does not arise from a cheap factory or a solitary subsidy. It is the accumulated effect of scale, supplier integration, access to critical minerals, manufacturing equipment, productive experience, accelerated learning and sustained political support, including subsidies. China did not create Europe’s industrial weaknesses. It understood earlier where value was moving and built a system around that future.
Europe has responded with regulation, funding and the announcement of numerous gigafactory projects. But here it is worth distinguishing two concepts that we in Spanish often translate with the same word: capacity and capability. The former expresses the volume a plant could produce according to its design, and it is what politicians and media tend to trumpet. The latter is the actual aptitude to reliably manufacture qualified cells, on a sustained basis, with high yields, few losses, reliable deliveries and competitive costs. A gigafactory can increase Europe’s capacity without substantially strengthening its capability if the materials, equipment, software, know-how, governance and decision rights remain under external control. Nominal capacity is a figure; real industrial capacity is the ability to produce and continue producing, both under normal conditions and during a crisis or conflict.
“China did not create Europe’s industrial weaknesses. It understood earlier where value was moving and built a system around that future”
The automotive sector makes evident what is at stake. The value of the vehicle is shifting from the internal combustion engine and mechanical manufacturing toward the battery, the electronics, the software and the control of the supply chain. Continuing to assemble cars no longer guarantees keeping the lion’s share of the margin, the knowledge, or the capacity to decide the next technological generation. Spain, the second-largest European vehicle manufacturer, has much to protect. The companies affiliated with ANFAC reported €80.315 billion in turnover in 2025 and invested a near-record amount close to €3.2 billion. The issue is not only keeping plants open, but ensuring that the transformation preserves engineering, suppliers, intellectual property and technological capacity in our country.
Beyond the automobile
Stationary storage further broadens the dimension of the challenge. In 2025, around the world installed 108 GW of new battery storage capacity, a 40% increase over the previous year. Nearly 80% of these were large-scale installations and around 90% used LFP technology, based on lithium, iron and phosphate. The European Commission estimates that the Union will need roughly 200 GW of total storage by 2030, compared with about 55 GW at the start of 2026. The figure covers other technologies as well, not only batteries, but it shows the speed at which the flexibility of the electrical system must grow.
Batteries do not substitute grids, interconnections, dispatchable generation or long-duration solutions. They fulfill other functions: responding in milliseconds, shifting energy across hours, smoothing peaks, providing reserves and safeguarding power quality. Something similar happens in data centers. They do not replace the entire architecture needed to overcome a prolonged outage, but they have become a critical layer of immediate response and operational continuity. Energy, digital capacity and technological control thus begin to rely on the same critical infrastructure.
That is why it is not enough to ask where a cell is manufactured. We frequently treat four distinct realities as if they were equivalent: localized production in Europe, value added retained in Europe, technology and intellectual property controlled from Europe, and externally diversified and resilient access. They can coincide, but they do not always. A European company without competitive production does not guarantee resilience. Likewise, foreign investment that roots local suppliers, engineering, research, data and decision-making capacity can provide more autonomy than a European flag placed on an imported system.
“An foreign investment that roots local suppliers and decision-making capacity can provide more autonomy than a European flag placed on an imported system”
The ultimate criterion is recoverability: after a disruption, how long does it take to restore production or service? The answer depends on alternative suppliers, spare parts, access to software, trained personnel, testing capacity and the authority to update the system. A supply chain optimized to operate at minimum cost under normal conditions can be very fragile when the environment changes.
From ambition to execution
The European response cannot be to shut the market or endlessly subsidize every link in the chain. A disciplined industrial policy is required. First, identify the nodes whose interruption would paralyze essential activities or irreversibly erode knowledge. Then, create predictable and fundable demand in mobility, grids, industry and critical infrastructure. It must also reduce structural disadvantages in energy, financing and permitting; secure alliances for materials and processing; and preserve capabilities in process engineering, power electronics, systems that manage the battery (BMS) and energy usage (EMS), software, data, testing, integration and recycling.
Not all links require European production. Some can be protected through diversified supply (including unexplored European resources), reserves, long-term contracts, reliable partnerships or rights to access technology. The true strategy begins when these choices are made explicit to all ecosystem players and action follows accordingly. Public subsidies, for their part, must pursue verifiable results, not grandiose promises: qualified production, performance, cost, learning, supplier development and autonomous recovery capacity. Public money must buy real capacity (capability), not announcements or mere nominal capacity (capacity).
“The true strategy begins when these choices are made explicit to all ecosystem actors and action follows accordingly”
Europe has at its disposal research, companies, engineering, a market and financial resources. What we still lack is political will and execution capacity to align these assets with the speed demanded by global competition. The crossroads is not about deciding whether we want to produce more batteries. We must determine which parts of the system we need to control so that our energy transition, our industry and our critical infrastructures remain truly European. Strategic autonomy is not measured by how many dependencies we eliminate, but by whether we preserve the ability to choose when conditions cease to be favorable.
