Fourteen members of the European Parliament have formally asked the European Commission to assess whether BYD’s cars pose a security threat to the European Union, and to consider restrictions that would include excluding the company from public procurement.
The written question was submitted on 4 November. It was led by Francois Kalfon, a French MEP, who asked the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA to evaluate the security risks of BYD vehicles and to consider placing the carmaker on a high-risk supplier list.
What the MEPs actually asked
In the preamble to the question, Kalfon argued that allowing connected vehicles from third countries to connect to sensitive European infrastructure creates an unacceptable security risk.
The MEPs also asked the Commission to clarify whether it plans to restrict Chinese vehicles from infrastructure with dual civilian and military uses, and whether it is considering excluding BYD from public procurement programmes.
BYD’s answer was narrow
BYD said that data from vehicles it sells in Europe, whether stored in the cloud or inside the car, cannot be accessed remotely from within China, and that European users retain control of their own data.
In a statement to Reuters, the company said: “BYD Europe will not provide such data to BYD entities in China or to third parties in China.”
That is a data-residency answer to a question about supplier trust. The two are not the same thing, and the MEPs framed their request around the second.
Brussels already has a lever
In September the Commission proposed new rules for public tenders that could raise the share of European goods and services in winning bids.
Because BYD already operates a plant in Hungary and plans more European capacity, it may still qualify for procurement contracts under those rules. Local production is precisely the defence that a domestic-content test cannot easily reject.
The Commission normally has six weeks to respond to a parliamentary question.
Paris is being asked in parallel
On the same day, Kalfon wrote to French prime minister Sebastien Lecornu, urging the French government to adopt a set of measures aimed at the potential security risks of connected Chinese vehicles.
The sequence matters. A parliamentary question is slow and public. A letter to a national prime minister is faster and can produce procurement rules, fleet bans or certification conditions without waiting for Brussels.
For Chinese carmakers selling into Europe, the exposure is no longer only tariffs on the price list. It is the possibility that a member state decides the product category itself is the problem.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Gasgoo report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://auto.gasgoo.com/news/202611/6I70477208C101.shtml.