The starting grid for Europe's car market has never been so crowded — and in Belgrade, they are calling the race early. Zoran Matovic, Managing Director of Auto Business & Enterprise in Serbia, told Forbes that the rapidly increasing number of unknown Chinese brands will be fighting amongst themselves to succeed in Europe. It is a warning delivered from a country that sits outside the EU yet trades squarely in its shadow, and it frames the coming decade of European automotive history as a survival contest with too many contestants.
Brussels, meanwhile, is writing the rulebook for that contest. The EU's 'Made in Europe' plan — a push that has unnerved global auto suppliers — would tie access to EU subsidies to where a car and its components are actually produced. Cars imported from Japan would not qualify, while models built in France, Portugal and Eastern Europe would benefit only if enough of their parts come from Europe. For brands shipping finished vehicles from Asia, that is a wall; for those already assembling on European soil, it is an invitation to localise deeper and faster.
Curiously, some researchers believe the wall comes with a generous gate. Tommaso Pardi, director of the international automotive research network GERPISA and a senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), notes that the 70% target is remarkably generous. Yet even a generous threshold redraws sourcing maps. Suppliers and assemblers across Eastern Europe — and in Europe-oriented markets such as Serbia — are now calculating whether their parts chains can clear the line, and what it will cost if they cannot.
