The European
Commission published the Clean Industrial Deal in February 2025 with a view to
bridge climate action and competitiveness under one overarching growth
strategy. This article critically analyses the Clean Industrial Deal as a key
component of the EU’s evolving industrial strategy, focusing on its
implications for achieving broad sustainability goals. It draws on the
Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) to allow for a structured and theoretically supported
analysis of how different aspects of the Deal may contribute to, or hinder,
systemic change. In doing so, the article analyses whether the measures
proposed in the Clean Industrial deal shift the regulatory balance in ways that
compromise the EU’s environmental commitments put forward in the 2019 Green
Deal, particularly in cases where speed and flexibility are prioritized over
precaution and long-term ecological considerations. It finds that the Clean
Industrial Deal has major potential to mainstream and integrate particularly
climate change objectives into EU industrial, trade and competition policy.
However, the jury is still out on how the Clean Industrial Deal fares in terms
of other sustainability objectives such as biodiversity, pollution and resource
sufficiency, but it nevertheless offers both opportunities and risks for
sustainability.