For several months, Paris has been actively urging the European Union to rethink its economic strategy. The French government contends that European competitiveness can no longer rely solely on open markets and global competition. Instead, it necessitates a robust industrial policy, favoring European production in critical sectors, and significantly reducing dependencies, particularly on China. Within the European Commission, Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné is championing the proposed Industrial Acceleration Regulation. Despite internal compromises that have scaled back its initial ambitions, France maintains an assertive stance. It now seeks to broaden the regulation’s scope: mechanisms for European preference in public procurement, purchasing, and subsidies would extend beyond clean technologies, energy-intensive industries, and electric vehicles to encompass shipbuilding, railway equipment, and the chemical sector.

These very sectors are where Franco-Moroccan industrial collaboration is most advanced. France likely stands as the EU member state with the most deeply integrated production apparatus with Morocco. This unique entanglement defines its position: Paris advocates for a stringent ‘Made in Europe’ while having cultivated a co-industrialization strategy over two decades with a non-EU nation. In the automotive industry, both Renault’s facilities in Tangier and Stellantis’s plant in Kenitra now operate as direct extensions of French production lines. Component suppliers in Morocco feed directly into European industrial sites. A similar trend is evident in aeronautics, where companies like Safran, Daher, and Latécoère have progressively integrated Moroccan industrial capabilities into their value chains. The Kingdom has evolved beyond a mere subcontracting workshop; it now directly contributes to the competitiveness of French and broader European industrial output. This integration is increasingly reaching into highly strategic areas, including batteries for electric vehicles, green hydrogen, critical materials, port infrastructure, and digital technologies.

“France likely stands as the EU member state with the most deeply integrated production apparatus with Morocco”

Paris’s objective is not to isolate Europe but to prevent a broad ‘Made with Europe’ approach – one that indiscriminately includes the Union’s approximately eighty trade partners – from diluting the essence of European preference. France champions a more discerning approach: distinguishing between countries that genuinely bolster European competitiveness and supply security, and those that remain simply external suppliers, or even pose a threat to European sovereignty.

How widely can this perspective be embraced? By mid-July, the 27 member states will conduct an initial political assessment of the ongoing work on the Industrial Acceleration Regulation within the Council. Germany’s position will be pivotal. Berlin has historically viewed French proposals for European industrial preference with caution, primarily due to concerns about trade restrictions from Beijing and potential Chinese reprisals against its automotive industry. However, under pressure from an unprecedented industrial crisis and a domestic political debate intensified by the rise of the AfD, Germany can no longer simply champion traditional free trade. Could a selective opening to trusted partners represent a potential compromise between Paris and Berlin? The future of the France Morocco industrial partnership hinges on this very notion. While France has never officially requested Morocco’s inclusion among future trusted partners, its overall industrial and diplomatic strategy positions the Kingdom as a natural candidate for such treatment.

The debate will also unfold within the European Parliament, where two French rapporteurs hold influential positions in the regulation’s examination. A particular responsibility will rest on them, as well as on the French delegations: to ensure that the new regulatory boundaries currently being drawn by the Union do not inadvertently undermine the future of the Morocco-France industrial partnership.