European Commission Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné has said that money lost on Swedish battery developer and manufacturer Northvolt fell within budgetary bounds.
A written question by three Swedish MEPs from the European Conservatives and Reformists group, Beatrice Timgren, Charlie Weimers and Dick Ericxon, had queried Séjourné over the financial losses for the European Union following the bankruptcy of Northvolt.
In November, the European Investment Bank had said that the EU’s exposure – the unpaid value of the loans — “currently amounts to $313 million [€298 million], under the guarantee of the European fund for strategic investments”.
The Swedish MEPs asked the EC what the total estimated financial loss to the EU budget was from the Northvolt bankruptcy, what measures the EC would take to minimise losses, ensure accountability and what lessons it had learned.
Séjourné said budget guarantees, such as those used in the European Fund for Strategic Investments and the InvestEU Fund, were only given to projects that supported EU policy goals and brought added value.
He added that when these guarantees were managed by outside partners including banks or investment institutions, those partners were in charge of enforcing the contracts. That was, he said, true even in cases of bankruptcy and that they were also responsible for taking all possible steps to reduce any financial losses, both for themselves and for the EU.
The Commissioner said exact numbers would only be clear in the annual reports, at the end of the financial year, with due account to the necessary protection of commercially sensitive information.
A report by Swedish economic researcher Jonas Grafström has criticised the EU’s industrial policy, citing Northvolt’s collapse as evidence of flawed taxpayer-funded investments. https://t.co/t1NwtBwJEd
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) December 11, 2024
Séjourné told the MEPs: “The Commission carries out annual evaluations of the adequacy of the provisioning for budgetary guarantees given expected losses.
“If the Commission has evidence that such provisioning is inadequate, it is prepared to take remedial action in line with Article 217 of the Financial Regulation.
“However, over the last decade, no remedial action has been necessary and, looking ahead, no such action appears likely since losses experienced remain in line with expectations.”
He concluded by saying that the EC gave top priority to a viable battery ecosystem and that the “recently announced ‘Battery Booster’ would support that ecosystem, notably through dedicated financing and demand-side measures, favouring EU production and diversification of supplies”.
Northvolt was long seen as Europe’s flagship company in the electric vehicle battery sector and a key part of the EU’s Green Deal.
The EC had hailed European battery development as a “success story”.
It had long been touted as Europe’s response to the supremacy of similar Asian companies but it never managed to fulfil that ambition. That was despite huge amounts of funding, especially from governments and government-aligned institutions.
In late November 2024, Northvolt went bankrupt when it could not secure further financing.
Swedish electric battery battery maker Northvolt has filed for bankruptcy in Sweden after it was unable to find money to pay its taxes. https://t.co/Al2OcIcCpR
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) March 13, 2025
