The European Union will focus on the “decarbonisation” of its economy in an effort to make itself competitive with the US and China, the bloc’s top civil servant European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said.
Addressing the European Parliament on November 27, she acknowledged that Europe had fallen significantly behind its international peers as described in the September report by former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi on the future of European competitiveness.
Von der Leyen went on to say that she and her colleagues would reverse this decline by tripling down on the bloc’s “green” goals, listing “decarbonisation” as one of three key pillars of her new “Competitiveness Compass”.
“I want to be clear: We must and will stay the course on the goals of the European Green Deal. But if we want to be successful in this transition, we must be more agile and better accompany people and business along the way,” she said.
“This is why we will put forward the Clean Industrial Deal within the first 100 days of the [commission presidency] mandate.”
She also bemoaned what she said was the lack of support available for EU tech start-ups, claiming that the bloc had just as many as the US but that they lacked the necessary economic resources to become viable.
“We are roughly as good as the US at creating start-ups. But when it comes to scale-ups, we are doing much worse than our competitors,” she claimed.
“A start-up from California can expand and raise money all across the United States. But a start-up in Europe has to deal with 27 different national barriers. We need to make it easier to grow in Europe.”
Von der Leyen said her decision to appoint a new Commissioner for Start-Ups, Research and Innovation was evidence that the bloc would soon make progress on the issue.
The commission president’s claim that “decarbonisation” was the best way forward came amid the increasing deindustrialisation of EU member states.
Her home country of Germany has been particularly hard-hit, with domestic manufacturers such as Volkswagen announcing they would be shutting down some factories due to high energy costs, a lack of available labour and trade tensions with China.
German steel manufacturer ThyssenKrupp has also announced it would be axing 11,000 jobs by 2030 for similar reasons, while Northvolt — long seen as Europe’s shining light in the EV battery sector — informed the media on November 25 that it would declare bankruptcy in a move set to cost the EU hundreds of millions in taxpayer euros.
Embattled green tech player Northvolt has missed some in-house targets and has curtailed production at its battery cells plant in northern Sweden. https://t.co/PyQKt5qh9g
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 18, 2024
