The European Commission has published the strategic document “A competitive compass for the EU”, literally “a compass for Europe’s competitiveness”.
The chosen title is certainly spot on: Europe, in terms of competitiveness, has definitely got lost in recent years.
The manufacturing production in Europe has continued to be weak in 2024. The negative phase started between 2022 and 2023 has lasted for more than two years and we have fallen below the pre-covid levels.
Compared to 2019, in the first eleven months of 2024 industrial production was lower than 11.6% in Germany, 5.8% in France, 5.3% in Italy and 1.4% in Spain.
In Germany, where the automotive sector suffered Chinese competition and the wrong choices of the European institutions, and where the chemical industry has heavily affected the increase in energy costs, the drop takes on almost epochal proportions.
To deal with this serious situation, which he finally seems to have realized, the European Commission outlines a new and complex strategy. His “polar star” would be none other than the renewal of Europe’s competitive force. A force that evidently recognizes we have lost.
For Ursula von der Leyen, the “cardinal points” of this transformation are:
1.Clionus the gap into innovation;
2.ConsUgare Decarbonisation and competitiveness;
3.Ridur our dependencies and increase security.
These imperatives are accompanied by “enabling” transverse actions:
a) simplify the regulatory environment, reducing bureaucratic charges and promoting speed and flexibility;
b) create an effective single market, reducing barriers;
c) integrate the capital markets and reorient the European budget;
d) promote the development of new skills and quality works, guaranteeing social equity;
e) better coordinate European policies with national ones.
In spite of the simplification proclamations, the agenda is rather complex in itself. The Commission recognizes that the change must start, not only from the contents, also from a review of its behaviors.
It is therefore promised that each commissioner will hold periodic dialogues with the parties concerned on the implementation of the measures, at least twice a year, listening to the concerns of the companies and identifying opportunities for the simplification and reduction of bureaucratic charges.
In addition, the Commission services will have to carry out “reality checks” with the parties involved.
All simplification efforts must be guided by the “understanding of the practical functioning of production chains” and by a regulatory system based on “trust and incentives”, rather than “detailed control”.
If it is not an admission of guilt, we are very close to each other.
Also according to the same commission, in recent years Europe would have perhaps made not adequate reality checks on its measures, listened to little the interested parties and adopted an approach steeped in no confidence in their citizens, judged unable to choose alone , and their companies, considered perhaps interested only in exploiting their customers and the environment, and therefore necessarily submitted to “detailed control” actions.
Certainly a change of direction desired and desirable, with which the commission seems to admit openly enough to have lost, in recent years, contact with the reality of the European production system.
Although all this is desirable, however, it is natural to ask how credible it is that the same people who until yesterday have marked their action to executive, suddenly become apostles of simplification and trust in the market.
And in fact, in the same strategy, the Commission announces 38 “main” measures which, at a tight pace, will be issued in the coming months and years.
We therefore hope that the push to simplification does not translate into yet another wave of bureaucracy. It wouldn’t be the first time. The vices are hard to die. All the economy news
