Korea Battery Industry Association and Germany's Fraunhofer Sign MOU to Strengthen Response to EU Supply Chain Restructuring

Eom Gicheon, Chairman of the Korea Battery Industry Association, and Alexander Michaelis, Director of the Fraunhofer IKTS Institute, are taking a commemorative photo after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the 16th (local time) at the Fraunhofer IVV Institute in Freising, Germany. Korea Battery Industry Association

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The Korea Battery Industry Association announced on April 16 (local time) that it had signed a Korea-Germany Battery Industry Technology Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Germany's Fraunhofer, one of the world's leading research institutes for applied and fundamental technologies, at the Fraunhofer IVV Institute in Freising, Germany.

The MOU signing ceremony was attended by Um Ki-Chun, Chairman of the Korea Battery Industry Association; Alexander Michaelis, Director of the Fraunhofer IKTS Institute; Tae-Young Han, Head of the Korea-Fraunhofer Science and Technology Cooperation Hub (K-FAST); and other officials from both countries' battery industries. Both sides agreed to cooperate in the following areas: cooperation across the entire battery supply chain, joint research and development (R&D) on next-generation batteries, expert exchange and networking, and collaboration on battery standards and certification.

This MOU was established in response to the recent move by the European Union to strengthen market entry requirements through the Industrial Acceleration Act (IAA), which promotes increased local production, restructuring of supply chains around trusted partners, and stricter criteria for public procurement and subsidies.

In particular, the IAA is shifting the key competitiveness criteria for strategic industries such as batteries to participation within the EU supply chain, which requires Korean companies to make structural changes to their EU market entry strategies.

The Korea Battery Industry Association explained, "This collaboration aims to build a cooperative model that combines Korea's battery manufacturing competitiveness with Germany's fundamental technologies, in line with the EU's battery supply chain restructuring framework. The goal is to simultaneously facilitate the entry of domestic battery and materials companies into the EU supply chain and expand their market access."

Based on the MOU, the two institutions plan to promote joint Korea-Germany international research to help domestic companies solve technical challenges and strengthen their capabilities to respond to EU regulations at the same time.

The joint research will be led by K-FAST, the official Fraunhofer cooperation platform with Korea, which consists of 38 Fraunhofer research institutes. The Korea Battery Industry Association will support research planning by identifying projects based on the needs of its member companies. K-FAST was launched in 2024 through the Global Industry Technology Cooperation Center (GITCC) program, overseen by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Um Ki-Chun, Chairman of the Korea Battery Industry Association, stated, "The EU Industrial Acceleration Act is a policy that fundamentally transforms supply chains and market entry conditions. This cooperation will be an important turning point for our companies to be stably incorporated into the EU supply chain as 'trusted partners.'"

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