Adam Maguire

So you'd need to favour European companies or bids where the products were being made in Europe.

The Act also proposes location-based minimum thresholds around the likes of subsidies and grants.

So, you know, a company or product would only qualify if X percent of the goods or of the product were European-made.

And it specifically, as you say, calls it a number of key areas, electric vehicles, steel production, green tech like solar panels and wind turbines.

So potentially very significant because if it's going to include, say, the green grants we have here in Ireland, suddenly they'd only apply to European products rather than stuff from China and elsewhere.

And all of this is really because these are areas that are seen to be of strategic importance to the EU, but they're also kind of cutting edge modern manufacturing.

So Europe wants to be competitive in them and wants to be ahead of the curve on them.

Okay, you can see the rationale for that, but why now?

Well, this notion of the EU favouring European goods over those made elsewhere has been knocking around for decades.

France was really one of the big proponents for a long time, but it never gained momentum until recently.

Instead, the kind of prevailing wisdom in most of Europe was focus on free trade, open markets, and that would give European countries and companies the best access and it would allow citizens to have the best choice then as well.

Things have changed considerably in the past decade, really in the past six or so years, because the pandemic can be seen as one of the big turning points.

Because when global supply chains ground to a halt as a result of lockdowns, particularly the really kind of severe ones that were in China, it highlighted just how exposed Europe was in the event of trade disruption, whether that was intentional or because of some unexpected disaster.

It was the pandemic experience, for example, that led the EU to focus on encouraging more computer chip production in Europe because they realised we're really dependent on Taiwan.

And if that's suddenly cut off, companies here are going to struggle to get computer chips.

Then Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlighted how dependent many countries and their industries, particularly in Germany, were on cheap Russian gas.

And then in more recent times, the return of Donald Trump to the White House has brought the focus on the reliance Europe has on the US for so many things.

Obviously, that's a problem in terms of trade and tariffs, but also the hostile remarks he's made around NATO, which has sparked fears that he's going to abandon that alliance and perhaps even take advantage of the fact that many European armies are reliant on the American arms industry.

Not to mention how reliant the economy here in Europe is in general on US technology.

One of the things that...