Q: How would you assess the automotive supply industry’s progress on sustainability in recent years?
Automotive suppliers are committed to achieving climate neutrality in their European operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 2040 and across the value chain (Scope 3) by 2050. This ambition is backed by concrete action. Between 2023-2024, the group of largest automotive suppliers have collectively reduced their Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions by 7%, while achieving an 87% recycling and recovery rate for production waste.
Companies are investing in eco-design, circularity, and remanufacturing, with the goal of eliminating production waste to landfill by 2030. At the same time, they are embedding responsible business conduct throughout their operations by adhering to international standards on due diligence, human rights and sustainable supply chains. Together, these efforts demonstrate that the sector is investing, innovating, and transforming its operations at scale.
Equally important is the industry’s commitment to a just transition. Automotive suppliers are investing in upskilling and reskilling their workforce, promoting fair and inclusive talent strategies, and strengthening partnerships with local communities to support regional development and ensure that the transition to sustainable mobility delivers social as well as environmental and economic benefits.
These results confirm that sustainability is increasingly embedded in business strategy across the supply industry. Companies are reducing emissions, improving resource efficiency, and investing in technologies that support both climate objectives and industrial competitiveness.
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Q: What are the main challenges facing automotive suppliers as they pursue their sustainability objectives?
These results also send an important message: industry commitment alone is not enough. If Europe wants to maintain this momentum and remain globally competitive, the transition must be supported by stable and enabling framework conditions.
The main risk is that Europe creates a regulatory environment that increases costs and complexity without enabling companies to scale sustainable business models competitively in neither Europe nor globally. The transition demands a careful balance between maintaining economic viability in order to finance our ambitious sustainability goals as well as to protect employment.
Automotive suppliers are making significant investments in decarbonisation, circularity and resilient supply chains, but these efforts must be matched by a policy framework that enables and rewards innovation. This means improving access to finance, ensuring coherent and predictable regulation, preserving technology neutrality, strengthening support for research and innovation, and recognising the full lifecycle environmental benefits of solutions such as repair, reuse and remanufacturing.
Without that support, investment risks moving elsewhere.
Q: What was the major theme at the CLEPA MRSE event, and why is this topic so important for automotive suppliers?
Circularity is one of Europe’s strongest industrial opportunities. Automotive suppliers are already active in eco-design, material recovery, remanufacturing, repair, and reuse, and these activities can significantly reduce emissions, resource dependency, and waste.
The key point is that circularity should go beyond basic recycling targets. Higher-value retention of materials and components must be prioritised wherever possible. Repair, refurbishment, reuse, and remanufacturing often deliver far greater environmental and economic benefits than recycling alone at end of life.
This is where Europe can combine sustainability with industrial resilience and competitiveness.
Q: How do you assess the current EU policy framework on sustainability and circularity?
There is strong ambition, but implementation needs to become more coherent, pragmatic and simple. Today, companies are often dealing with overlapping, inconsistent and rigid requirements that create uncertainty and divert resources away from innovation and investment.
What industry needs is a policy framework that combines consistency with flexibility and reflects the realities of industrial and economic transformation. Sustainability policy should go beyond compliance by actively enabling companies to scale sustainable technologies, circular business models and manufacturing operations in Europe.
The upcoming Circular Economy Act will be an important opportunity to strengthen that alignment.
Q: Several speakers linked sustainability to competitiveness. Why are these issues increasingly connected?
Because sustainability is no longer separate from industrial strategy. Access to critical raw materials, resilient supply chains, energy costs, and circular business models all directly affect Europe’s economic strength and strategic autonomy.
If Europe gets the framework right, decarbonisation can become a driver of innovation, investment, and global leadership. But if policy only adds obligations without creating the right conditions and incentives, Europe risks weakening its industrial base.
Competitiveness and sustainability must move together.
Q: What role are automotive suppliers playing in shaping sustainable mobility solutions?
Suppliers are at the centre of the transformation. They are developing advanced materials and technologies, improving climate risk management, designing products for circularity, and investing in low-emission manufacturing processes.
These solutions are already being implemented across the industry today. Suppliers are demonstrating that sustainability can drive innovation and business opportunities when the right policy framework is in place.
Q: What is CLEPA calling for going forward?
CLEPA is calling for a more coherent and enabling policy framework that gives companies the confidence to continue investing, innovating and manufacturing in Europe. This means ensuring greater regulatory consistency and simplification across sustainability legislation, recognising the full lifecycle environmental impacts of products and technologies, strengthening support for circular business models such as repair, reuse and remanufacturing, and creating investment frameworks that accelerate innovation, industrial transformation and the deployment of sustainable technologies. It also means adopting policies that reinforce resilient supply chains, strengthen Europe’s industrial competitiveness and enhance its strategic autonomy.
Europe has the expertise, technological leadership and innovation capacity to lead the transition to sustainable mobility. The priority now is to ensure that sustainability policy and industrial strategy work hand in hand, creating the conditions for companies to invest, compete and deliver the transition from within Europe.
Bio:
Paolo Alburno is CLEPA’s Director of Technical Regulations, leading the association’s work on sustainability, circularity, chemicals policy and vehicle regulations. An environmental engineer by training, he coordinates automotive suppliers’ engagement on major EU legislative initiatives concerning materials, product compliance and industrial competitiveness.
Context:
The CLEPA Materials Regulations and Sustainability Event (MRSE) is the association’s flagship forum on sustainability, circularity and materials compliance. Bringing together policymakers, technical experts and industry leaders, the 2026 edition focused on implementing Europe’s sustainability agenda while strengthening competitiveness, resilience, and strategic autonomy across the automotive supply chain.
Following 17 editions in the cities of Stuttgart and Frankfurt, the MRSE 2026 was held in Bruxelles to better facilitate dialogue with European Institutions and policy makers.
