The European Commission on Wednesday is expected to propose a new industrial policy strategy with measures to boost a speedier expansion of renewable energy and green technologies, including through an easing of state aid rules to enable higher subsidies.

The plan to make rules simpler and faster for “years to come” and “match subsidies of third countries” to nurture their clean-tech sectors comes in response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which could lead to “unfair competition”, commission president Ursula von der Leyen claimed in a mid-December in a speech to the EU parliament.