Brussels, 11/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - With the support of 12 other member states, France is insisting that third industrial revolution technologies can benefit from public aid under new conditions.
Arnaud Montebourg, the French minister for industry, welcomed the updated proposal for EU industrial policy submitted the day before by Commissioner Antonio Tajani (see EUROPE10707). He believes that this creates a very high standard with its 20% target by 2020 to increase industry's contribution to European GDP, which since the crisis, has fallen to 16%. Speaking during the Competitiveness Council on 11 October in Luxembourg, Montebourg did not spare the European Commission and said in a televisual communication given in a backdrop to the meeting that “Europe must unite but it must also make decisions that are appropriate. We are suffering from a flagrantly unfair globalisation in which Brussels prevents us from doing what all the other countries are doing. We must reorientate Europe because it is not adapted to the unfairness of world trade. When the United States, China, India and many others decide to subsidise their industries, they don't get Brussels on their backs”. Six member states: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Slovakia, according to the minister, gave their backing on Thursday to the request made this week by Germany, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and France that the EU, “has the right of self-defence and the right to organise and protect itself so that it is on a level demanded by global competition”. He added that these countries are defending “the idea that new technologies - nanotechnologies, smart networks and new materials - that will make up the third industrial revolution, can benefit from state aid under new conditions”. (EH/trans.fl)