The automotive industry is at the heart of Europe's economy and the European integration project, where the electric vehicle (EV) transition – arguably the most profound disruption in car-making since the advent of the moving assembly line – poses major challenges. On one hand, EVs are embraced at an institutional level as a means to address the climate crisis. On the other, the transition exposes uneven regional capacities in terms of innovation, production and resource access. Political challenges of crafting industrial policy, the adverse environmental impact of EV battery production, and shocks to the labor market, are some of the EV transition’s impacts. Moreover, the emergence of China as a global leader, makes Europe’s EV transition a geopolitically sensitive matter.

These and other EV transition-induced predicaments are particularly relevant for the European (semi)periphery – here defined as Central-East and Southeast Europe (CESEE), comprised of both EU member states, and countries in the process of accession. Despite their integration into global automotive value chains, the agency and perspective of CESEE countries are often overlooked when studying the EV transition, as CESEE is often considered merely a venue where external actors (chiefly, competing Western and Chinese multinationals and state actors) shape the electric future of mobility.

To address this gap, the project advances a pericentric perspective, critically examining Europe’s EV transition from the perspective of CESEE state institutions, policy elites, local firms, workers and their organizations, and environmental social movements. By centering localized power dynamics, the project highlights how (semi)peripheral actors navigate, adapt to, and contest the EV transition. To that end, the main activity of this project is a 3-day workshop bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars working on the topic, facilitating the production of foundational academic outputs, a policy paper, and developing a roadmap for future research proposals.