Dear President Von der Leyen, 

The current energy crisis facing Europe has exposed both the structural vulnerabilities of fossil fuel dependence and its mounting economic costs, while simultaneously demonstrating the strategic opportunity that clean electrification represents for Europe’s future. 

Across sectors, businesses are increasingly recognizing electrification as a defining pathway to strengthen competitiveness, enhance affordability and ensure long-term energy security, and stand ready to invest in electrifying transport, buildings, industrial processes and operations at scale. We Mean Business Coalition (WMBC) is working with partners and leading companies with global operations across the electrification value chain and key sectors of the economy, including energy, transport, industry, buildings and technology, to demonstrate what becomes possible when corporate ambition is matched with the right enabling policy frameworks. This is at the heart of our Electric Advantage programme: a platform for collective business and government leadership to accelerate the transition to modern, clean, electrified economies 

Business ambition alone will not deliver electrification at the speed and scale that the moment demands. Businesses consistently identify barriers that continue to slow electrification, particularly on the demand side, such as high upfront costs, grid connection queues and capacity constraints, misaligned incentives and uncertainty around future electricity costs, regulatory fragmentation, and limited frameworks to reward flexibility and smart electrification solutions. Businesses need clear long-term signals, stable regulatory frameworks and enabling market conditions, especially at a moment when access to clean, resilient and competitively priced energy is more critical than ever. The European Union now has a critical and timely window to put these conditions in place. 

Against this backdrop, we strongly welcome the European Commission’s work on an Electrification Action Plan, including the establishment of an electrification target, and subsequent legislative proposals. The Plan must provide not only strategic direction, but also a robust and coordinated framework capable of driving implementation and investment across Member States, reducing fragmentation and creating the predictability businesses need to accelerate electrification and unlock its benefits. 

We are therefore pleased to share two documents which we believe can provide timely and actionable business guidance: 

• Annex I — 10 Policy Principles to Seize the Electric Advantage: a set of high-level policy asks for electrification that reflect practical business experience across sectors and regulatory contexts, prepared by We Mean Business Coalition. 

• Annex II — An EU Statement on Electrification, coordinated by Corporate Leaders Group Europe (CLG), from more than 70 leading companies and business networks representing the entire energy value chain, underlining the urgency of accelerating clean electrification in Europe (which you already received from CLG in March 2026). 

Recognising the specificities of the European Union context, we believe the Electrification Action Plan can help to make electrification faster, less fragmented and more competitive by: 

• Reinforcing clean electrification as a shared strategic priority and setting a clear 50% target:  a robust electrification target of 50% electrification by 2040, embedded in legislation and supported by indicative allocation across Member States while allowing flexibility in national delivery pathways, would provide the right balance between predictability and flexibility, helping to send clear signals for investors, strengthen business confidence, and guide Member State planning, reinforcing electrification as core pillar of Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and decarbonisation strategy. 

• Realigning financial incentives and taxation to support electrification: Removing structural advantages for fossil fuels by redirecting fossil fuel subsidies and realigning incentives towards electrification, ensuring electricity is not taxed more heavily, and incorporating measures to protect vulnerable consumers, as reducing VAT for electrification technologies and social leasing schemes, will be crucial to improve the competitiveness and affordability of electricity-based solutions across the EU internal market.  

• Ensuring electricity markets reward clean, flexible supply and demand: Electricity markets should provide stable and predictable revenues and incentives for clean, flexible demand and support direct corporate procurement of clean electricity. Enabling the participation of aggregators, distributed energy resources and active consumers, including industrial users, though measures such as dedicated retail tariffs rewarding flexibility, can help reduce system costs, lower price volatility and accelerate renewable integration. 

• Delivering modern electricity systems including grids and enabling infrastructure: Accelerating investment in transmission and distribution networks, streamlining grid connection procedures, ensuring transparent connection frameworks, and swiftly adopting network codes that enable flexibility are essential steps. Enabling flexibility and digitalisation, including grid-enhancing technologies and smart, transparent network charges that incentivise flexibility and locational price signals and make the electricity grid more productive, can further strengthen system resilience, reduce operational inefficiencies, increase the speed of connections, and optimise the use of existing and new grid capacity. 

• Mobilizing finance and de-risk investment: Public financial mechanisms remain essential to de-risk investment and crowd-in private capital for electrification. Tailored financing mechanisms that prioritise direct electrification funding, including operationalising the Industrial Decarbonisation Bank and the European Competitiveness Fund in a way that explicitly supports electrification alongside the strategic use of ETS revenues. 

• Using regulatory standards and mandates to accelerate deployment: Strengthening interoperability requirements, smart charging standards for electric vehicles and electricity contracts that enable smart charging by default, alongside building codes ensuring readiness for EV charging and heat pumps will create conditions for rapid scale-up. Mandates, including for zero-emission vehicles and V2G-readiness for new vehicles, and market-based mechanisms to accelerate the uptake of heat pumps, can further support the deployment of electrification technologies. 

• Building the skilled workforce needed to electrify the economy and integrate electrification into industrial strategies: Expanding the workforce required for electrification, from installers and electricians to engineers, will be essential to avoid implementation bottlenecks. In parallel, the EU needs to strengthen strategic value chains, innovation and domestic manufacturing competitiveness.  

As a coalition representing leading businesses across sectors and geographies, WMBC believes that effective electrification policy should be informed by practical implementation experience and real-world investment decisions.  

We remain committed to supporting this dialogue and would therefore welcome the opportunity to facilitate a direct exchange between leading businesses, including senior executives participating in our Electric Advantage Programme, and your Cabinet, as well as other relevant Commissioners and Directorate-General officials, to discuss how the Electrification Action Plan can best unlock electrification at scale across Europe. 

Yours sincerely, 

María Mendiluce, Chief Executive Officer, We Mean Business Coalition 

Eliot Whittington, Executive Director, Chief Systems Change Officer; Director of CISL’s Corporate Leaders Groups 

Ramon Arratia, Chief Sustainability Officer and VP Global Public Affairs, Ball Corporation  

Eva Riesenhuber, Global Head of Sustainability, Siemens 

Gonzalo Sáenz de Miera, Director of Climate Change and Alliances, Iberdrola