Europe's answer to Chinese car imports has so far been arithmetic: measure the subsidy a manufacturer received, and set a duty to match it. France and Germany have now asked for something categorically different — a switch.
Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz wrote jointly to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday 5 October 2026, ten days before EU leaders meet in Brussels to discuss trade imbalances with China. The letter and accompanying paper were reported by Reuters, Bloomberg and the South China Morning Post the same day.
What the two capitals are asking for
The proposal is a trade instrument available "where third countries seek to undermine the restoration of a level playing field and fair market conditions by political or economic means, leading to severe and systematic distortions". The measures it could reach for run, in the letter's words, "up to an immediate cut-off from the internal market if needed".
| Element | Proposal |
|---|---|
| Scope | Goods, not services |
| Named in formal text | No country — drafted as country-agnostic |
| Decision procedure | Reversed qualified majority |
| Sectors cited | Chemicals, PET plastics, plug-in hybrid vehicles |
| Second instrument | Reduce reliance on single sources for critical supplies |
| Still required | Approval by member states and the European Parliament |
The decision procedure is the part that would change behaviour fastest. Under reversed qualified majority, the Commission acts unless enough governments assemble a qualified majority to stop it. That inverts the dynamic of October 2024, when Germany voted against the electric-car duties and they passed anyway — Berlin's reversal here is the political news in the document.
Why "country-agnostic" is a drafting convention
Neither capital names China in the formal language, and the triggers are written generically: excess capacity, subsidies, dumping, currency distortion, supply-chain concentration. The trade data in the same paper makes the target obvious. Eurostat recorded €559.4 billion of EU goods imports from China in 2025 against €199.6 billion of exports. Officials have also floated the scenario the tool is really built for, and it is not cars: a Chinese halt to rare-earth exports.
Plug-in hybrids are on the sector list for a reason. The EU's countervailing duties apply to battery-electric cars built in China and not to plug-in hybrids, and Chinese exporters moved into the gap — EU imports of Chinese hybrids rose from about 3,800 vehicles in October 2024 to 50,000 in July 2026. Brussels responded by asking Beijing to cap its hybrid exports at around 15% of the European market under threat of a fresh anti-subsidy investigation. That request is a negotiation; what Macron and Merz describe is what happens if it fails.
What it means for a European Tesla buyer
The duties in force since 30 October 2024 are calibrated per company, according to how much state support each manufacturer was found to have received. Tesla asked for and received an individual examination, and came out of it better than anyone.
| Importer | Standard tariff | Anti-subsidy duty | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU — Tesla (Shanghai-built Model 3) | 10% | 7.8% | 17.8% |
| EU — BYD | 10% | 17.0% | 27% |
| EU — SAIC/MG | 10% | 35.3% | 45.3% |
Tesla is the exporter from China that the current regime treats most leniently, and that leniency follows directly from how the regime is designed. It asks what a given company received, not where the car was loaded onto the ship.
An instrument that responds to a third country's conduct has no equivalent dial. It is aimed at Beijing's behaviour, and it would restrict access to the single market for goods arriving from the country concerned. Europe's Model 3 is built at Giga Shanghai — a fact that already shapes when European buyers get the refreshed car, and that would place it inside the scope of a measure drawn that way. The European Model Y comes from Grünheide and would not be touched.
None of this is law. Two governments have asked the Commission to propose an instrument; the Commission has not drafted one, and member states and Parliament would both have to pass it. But the request marks the point at which Europe's two largest economies stopped arguing about the level of the duty and started arguing about whether the market stays open at all — and the company holding the lowest duty has the most to lose from that change of question.