One Zero, Two Transitions: Continental Prices, Local Incomes and Europe's Unequal Transition Timetable

Europe's consumer transition combines continentally priced technologies, locally formed household payment capacity, nationally uneven cushioning and uniform policy schedules. This methodological working paper develops a transition access framework that distinguishes time price, outright-purchase burden, amortised burden, financeability, practical accessibility and the probability of reaching readiness before a common policy date. It argues that technology diffusion normally accommodates unequal incomes partly through time: higher-capacity markets adopt first, while learning, depreciation and used markets permit later entry elsewhere. A synchronised mandate compresses that sequence and can convert an ordinary adoption lag into hardship, nominal compliance or asymmetric policy renegotiation. The paper treats tradable-price convergence as an orthodox market outcome rather than a malfunction, and identifies the distributional problem that emerges when policy makes access to particular capital goods increasingly binding. Slovakia's automotive production model illustrates the production-access inversion: a territory may succeed as a site of transition production while its households remain poorly positioned as transition consumers. The 2035 new-car standard is analysed as a manufacturer fleet rule, not a direct household purchase ban. The paper proposes a falsifiable empirical programme using specification-matched prices, harmonised earnings, household financeability, charging and installation access, used-market pathways and uncertainty-aware readiness estimates.