Twenty-five years ago, with the Lisbon Strategy, the European institutions set themselves the objective of making the European Union, by 2010, the most competitive and dynamic economy in the world. A few days ago, Volkswagen, one of the symbols of German and European industry, as well as of the reconstruction of our continent after the tragic period of the war, announced that it was in very serious difficulty, hypothesizing the closure of factories also in Germany and tens of thousands of redundancies. A prospect, until recently, unthinkable.
The main European car manufacturer, once the pride of our industry, is no longer able to compete with the competition from local producers in Asia, its main market. Chinese producers, in fact, today manage to produce not only products at significantly lower prices than European ones, which is not new, but also with a quality that is increasingly similar to the European one.
This situation, unfortunately, does not only concern the automotive industry, but is occurring in numerous other industrial sectors. In some critical segments, such as semiconductors, we have fallen particularly behind. Mario Draghi, in his recent report on European competitiveness, stated that, in the absence of decisive interventions, Europe is destined for a slow decline.
In 2010, the average per capita income in the United States was 31% higher than in Europe. Today it is 37% higher. The distance, rather than decreasing, increased. In the same period, China, which started with an income equal to 23% of that of America, reached 41%.
In light of these data, it could be said that Europe and its institutions have failed, at least so far, in the attempt to make our economy the most dynamic and competitive in the world. It is significant that a leading figure of the European establishment such as Mario Draghi, protagonist of European policies in recent decades, has taken such a clear position on the need for change.
It is to be hoped that this will lead to a critical and constructive reflection on what has been done so far and on the mistakes made, as well as, hopefully, a change of direction. Draghi has proposed a massive investment plan financed jointly by European states. It could be a solution, but the risk is that, without a change of approach on the part of the European institutions, the injection of further resources will end up multiplying public programs designed in Brussels in a self-referential way, which unload bureaucracy and obligations on citizens and businesses Europeans.
As Draghi and numerous studies by the European Commission itself have underlined, bureaucracy especially damages small and medium-sized businesses, not large ones. In recent years, Europe has produced almost double the regulations compared to the United States. In many cases, these rules have not been coordinated with each other and have overlaps and inconsistencies.
An example is the electric car sector: a drastic change in automotive technology was demanded without adequate adaptation in energy production. The result would be that, even if we achieved the goal of migrating all our cars to electric by 2035, we would still continue to burn oil to generate the necessary energy, rendering the effort in vain.
Europe has imposed increasingly higher standards on European companies, without worrying too much about the costs of such decisions, while allowing those who produce outside Europe to export their products to us, without being subject to the same rules. This is a recipe for deindustrializing Europe and ultimately impoverishing its citizens. The issues, as in the case of Volkswagen, are coming home to roost.
Before investing further huge resources, it is necessary to stop complicating the lives of our companies, pretending to guide them towards a bright future identified by public officials, but not tested by the market. We must also abandon the illusion of being able to have standards that are very different from those of our international competitors and, at the same time, completely open borders. Otherwise, it will just be wasted money and more debt for our children and grandchildren.
