The EU's Buy European rule names BYD, but Yutong sells more buses
Brussels built its Buy European rule around 200 buses that were 6% of the order
The European Commission presented its Public Procurement Act on 9 September, and Stéphane Séjourné, the Executive Vice-President for industrial strategy, explained who it was for: after this reform, he said, it would not be the Commissioner's fault if there were BYD buses in Berlin. He meant Deutsche Bahn's 200-bus BYD contract from December. The same framework handed MAN about 2,850 buses, and the Chinese brand that actually leads Europe's electric bus market is not BYD.
Séjourné's Public Procurement Act folds three 2014 directives into one regulation
The Act replaces the three procurement directives of 2014 with a single regulation that applies directly in all 27 member states, covering public purchasing worth about €2 trillion a year, roughly 14% of EU GDP. Every tender moves onto one European platform. The default award method becomes best price-quality ratio, and at least 30% of the score must come from criteria other than price, rising to 50% for labour-intensive contracts.
The 50% European content test decides who can bid, and China is not on the list
Public buyers will be able to restrict tenders to European operators, demand a minimum share of European content, award bonus points to European bids and, for large or strategic contracts, reject any bid whose value is less than 50% European. Eligibility follows a country list: signatories of the WTO procurement agreement and partners with a procurement chapter in their trade deal, which keeps the United Kingdom and the United States in and leaves China out. The test is on the product, not the letterhead, so a European company offering Chinese-built hardware can be excluded too. The strategic sectors named are energy, water, rail, ports, airports and post, and the vehicles inside them are electric buses, refuse trucks, municipal car fleets and charging infrastructure, the same fleet contracts for which the Industrial Accelerator Act already asks carmakers for 70% European components.
Deutsche Bahn's 200 BYD buses were 6% of a 3,300-bus, €1 billion order
Deutsche Bahn signed its framework agreements in December 2025: about 3,000 battery-electric and hybrid buses plus roughly 300 diesels, worth over €1 billion, delivered to DB Regio between 2027 and 2032. MAN takes about 95%; Iveco, Scania, Daimler Buses and Zhongtong sit in the frameworks too. BYD's share is 200 battery-electric intercity buses, built at its Komárom plant in Hungary, which has made buses for Europe since 2017 and is spending €80 million to lift capacity from 400 to 1,250 a year with 620 new jobs. That 6% was enough for finance minister Lars Klingbeil to call for healthy location patriotism, and enough to give the Commissioner his line.
Yutong sold 1,636 electric buses in Europe in six months, all shipped from China
Europe registered 8,141 battery-electric buses in the first half of 2026, up 49%, and Yutong topped the table with 1,636, ahead of Iveco on 1,156, Solaris on 1,022, BYD on 681, MAN on 584 and Mercedes on 553. Add King Long, Zhongtong, Golden Dragon and CRRC and Chinese brands took 2,797 of them, 34% of the market. Yutong has no European factory: it runs a 4,600 m² parts warehouse in France, and every bus arrives from Zhengzhou. Under the Act a Yutong bid can simply be excluded. A BYD bus from Komárom has to be measured on content instead, and the Commission has not yet said how a Hungarian-assembled bus with cells from Shenzhen scores against the 50% line.
Nine member states and Šefčovič's October trip to Beijing decide what survives
The regulation needs the European Parliament and the Council, and the Council is where it slows down. France drove the Made in Europe wording; Germany prefers a looser Made with Europe formula for trusted partners; Sweden, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia have all warned against it, with Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson saying in February that he did not want to protect European businesses that are basically not competitive. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce to the EU says the text would distort a level playing field, and trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič flies to China in early October. A transition of several years follows adoption. BYD, meanwhile, earns 53% of its revenue outside China and has every reason to keep building inside the Union.
AutoNext Take
Brussels has named the wrong bus company. BYD is the Chinese brand with a factory inside the Union, 620 new Hungarian jobs and an €80 million expansion under way; Yutong is the one outselling every European manufacturer with buses that arrive by ship, and it appears nowhere in the Commissioner's sentence. A rule that scores content rather than addresses will hit the importer first, which is the right result, and will then have to rule on how European a Komárom bus is, which is where the politics begin.
Šefčovič lands in Beijing in early October with this text in his bag, and the 50% content line is what will be traded. Our expectation is that the country list survives, the hard 50% threshold is softened into bonus points for all but the largest contracts by the time the Council reaches a general approach in 2027, and Deutsche Bahn's 200 BYD buses are delivered on schedule from 2027, because nothing in this regulation reaches back to a framework signed in December 2025.
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