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The Commission has certainly drawn up this strategy on competitiveness in view of the so-called Draghi report, which demonstrates what we already knew: the Draghi report was commissioned by the Brussels bureaucracies who have used it as an alibi for not apologising, which is what they should do, for at least five wasted years in the history of the European Union.
It is striking that it is said that two objectives are being pursued: i) to identify the necessary changes in policies in order to adapt them to reality and develop new ways of working together to increase the speed of decision-making, ii) to simplify frameworks and rules and overcome fragmentation. I say striking because that is what European reformists, conservatives and patriots have been calling for for decades, and receiving accusations of being deniers, turbo-capitalists or neoliberals.
But I insist that, in my opinion, and the precedents support my interpretation, that it is pure hot air since the whole approach is based on approving new regulations on matters such as artificial intelligence, the cloud, quantum computing, biotechnology and the space industry. Rather than regulating, they should eliminate the ‘wokism’ of universities, gender or race quotas, in order to promote merit, ability and ingenuity; and let a fresh torrent of ideas and projects flow. But if the bureaucrats and parliamentarians are the ones who are going to set the framework, I can assure you that we will make the same mistakes again and lose another five years.
One of the most controversial points of the Strategy, which is also contradictory to the theoretical approach, is that it does not back down on the climate objectives but reaffirms them. The target of a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2040 is maintained, which puts us Europeans under the same constraints.
We know from the United States and China that these new technologies and quality industrial production are particularly energy-intensive, without wind and solar being sufficient, stable, constant, permanent sources. Either we commit to nuclear, hydraulic energy (contradictory to the approaches of the Nature Restoration Regulation) and gas and oil or we will be left definitively out of international competition.
The document presented reiterates – we expected nothing less – the announcement by Ursula Von der Leyen in her inauguration speech for the approval of a Clean Industrial Pact; a kind of Green Deal 2.0 to decarbonise heavy industry, such as metallurgy or chemistry; which does not bode well for European industry.
Perhaps one of the points where the European Commission’s document causes the most outrage is when, with regard to the automotive sector, it says that a strategic dialogue will be launched with the sector to boost the recharging infrastructure and the promotion of the electric vehicle. Firstly, because no dialogue was opened with the sector to approve the Directive that agreed the ban on combustion engine vehicles, but rather the sector was imposed in the name of Agenda 2030; and secondly, because it is clear that European citizens, consumers and buyers have decided that they do not want electric vehicles; so what we can imagine is huge amounts of public money to finance car companies and cover their losses or to bring about a reduction in prices to incentivise the purchase of electric vehicles, which means that Europeans will pay two or three times for this transition, via taxes, via debt, via price.
Ideas such as the creation of a green corporate fleet seem more like proposals from snake oil salesmen than serious approaches to solving the problem of production, employment and transport in Europe. I have very little confidence; not even in some of the companies that surrendered to Von der Leyen’s tremendous power during the last term in office and that, almost certainly, are now just waiting to have their bottom line subsidised.