Mezzour: new EU law threatens Morocco auto investment
Industry Minister Riyad Mezzour warns that a new EU law targeting 80% local car production could redirect investments away from Morocco.
Morocco's Minister of Industry, Trade, Investment and the Digital Economy, Riyad Mezzour, has warned that the transformations under way in Europe's automotive industry pose a major challenge for Morocco, saying European countries' push to restore their own production capacity could redirect investments and projects once destined for the Kingdom back to Europe. The warning, reported by Hespress, came during a meeting of the House of Representatives' Productive Sectors Committee on Tuesday morning, held to present his ministry's 2027 sub-budget.
What is threatening Morocco's competitiveness?
Mezzour explained that Morocco's competitiveness in the car industry rests mainly on lower production costs and wages compared with investors' home countries, and that restoring European production capacity could allow manufacturers to relocate part of their output back home. He noted that the European Parliament is currently debating a law on accelerating European industry, aimed at restoring the continent's production capacity, including a push to make 80% of car production take place within Europe — a direct challenge, he said, to the attractiveness of Morocco's industrial sector to investors.
The minister added that Europe's shift toward electric vehicles could push some manufacturers to keep producing diesel and other conventional cars for longer, directing part of that output to markets outside Europe, in order to preserve their production capacity during the transition period.
A shift that began a year and a half ago
Mezzour said the debate over these European trends began a year and a half ago, and has already coincided with the redirection of several investments and projects once planned for Morocco toward Europe instead. He warned that if the current situation continues, its effects might not show up clearly in national economic indicators over the next five years, even as positive figures keep being recorded during that period — a sign, he said, that the risk is structural and gradual rather than immediate.
What does the minister propose in response?
Addressing lawmakers, Mezzour stressed the need to prepare for this shift starting now, by accelerating the adoption of robotics, industrial automation and artificial intelligence in domestic factories, strengthening innovation, developing and diversifying export markets instead of relying on Europe alone, and supporting the emergence of Moroccan brands able to establish themselves in the domestic market before expanding into neighbouring and European markets. He concluded that facing these changes requires a comprehensive mobilisation of the country's economic and political forces, calling the shift a major test for the national economy.