The European Commission has officially launched the new EU Industrial Maritime Value Chains Alliance, following up on its commitment in the recently adopted European Industrial Maritime Strategy.
The maritime industry is a cornerstone of Europe’s economic security and strategic autonomy, with a key role in safeguarding supply chains, ensuring defence readiness and supporting the clean and digital transitions.
The alliance aims to bring together maritime manufacturers, shipowners and other downstream users, EU Member States and their regions, investors, and social partners. Its goal is to help strengthen Europe’s maritime industrial and technological sovereignty in identified lead markets, notably segments with a potential to bolster Europe’s maritime manufacturing capacity. The alliance will help create business cases for scaling up production and deployment in market segments and technologies relevant to the EU manufacturing base, and address the needs of the shipping, ports, and other segments of the maritime sector. In addition, this alliance will prompt targeted investment, public-private synergies, and industrial collaboration toward joint action and concrete projects, while addressing market, trade, and competitiveness challenges more comprehensively.
Overview
On 4 March 2026, the European Commission presented the EU Industrial Maritime Strategy. The strategy highlights the need to preserve and foster a strong maritime industrial base as a key enabler of Europe’s security and strategic autonomy, long-term competitiveness, resilience and twin transition objectives. Creating an EU Industrial Maritime Value Chains Alliance (EMA) is an important element of the strategy. The alliance brings together public and private stakeholders from the entire waterborne ecosystem to strengthen Europe’s maritime manufacturing capabilities.
Maritime manufacturing encompasses a broad range of industrial activities and services. These include building, repairing, maintaining, converting, retrofitting, dismantling, and recycling seagoing and inland navigation vessels, boats, floating platforms, and specialised surface and underwater units, as well as producing equipment and technologies for maritime, port, and blue economy activities.
Objectives
The EMA aims to strengthen Europe’s maritime industrial sovereignty and technological leadership in identified lead markets, i.e. segments with a potential to bolster Europe’s maritime manufacturing capacity and serve EU strategic interests. To this end, the EMA will help identify, create and facilitate business cases for scaling up production and deployment of EU-made vessels and technologies in relevant lead markets while serving the needs of the broad waterborne ecosystem (e.g. shipping, inland navigation, ports, and several other blue economy segments).
Tasks: from mapping to upscaling
In line with the EU industrial maritime strategy, the alliance is expected to facilitate the
- mapping and monitoring supply and demand drivers and barriers in identified lead markets
- fostering collaboration to pave the way for scaling up manufacturing and deployment, including through actionable plans in identified segments
- building up pipelines of strategic projects that strengthen European maritime value chains and support the EU’s strategic interests
The alliance will also support the EU and EU countries in identifying, coordinating and aligning (joint) investment priorities and supplementary incentives to foster synergies across the value chain in Europe.
In line with the strategy’s objectives, EMA is finally elected to focus more comprehensively on the competitiveness challenges facing the European maritime manufacturing sector.
The alliance is open to all public and private stakeholders with relevant activities in the waterborne sector and the wider blue economy, including maritime manufacturers, upstream suppliers, downstream users, EU countries and their regions, investors, social partners, academia, and civil society groups. The alliance’s terms of reference set out the membership criteria. The Alliance members have the right to participate in the general assembly, which will be held at least once a year to fix the main priorities and adopt the alliance’s opinion and recommendations. The steering board coordinates the alliance’s work and defines its main deliverables. Working groups of field experts undertake specific thematic areas.
A call for applications invites stakeholders to join if they meet the eligibility criteria and commit to the Alliance’s objectives. The call will remain continuously open with a first cut-off deadline on 16 October 2026.
Source: European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs