A joint resolution adopted by the European Parliament in plenary session on Wednesday 5 July once again calls on the European Commission to bring forward an action plan for a “consistent and comprehensive” industrial policy.
MEPs want the Commission to provide targets, indicators, measures and time scales. Like the Council, Parliament calls on the Commission to base its strategy on an assessment of the impact of mainstreaming industrial policy into EU strategic policy initiatives. MEPs also state that the strategy must be based, inter alia, on digitalisation, on an energy- and resource-efficient economy and on a life-cycle and circular economy approach, this last point echoing a report adopted the previous day on the lifespan of tangible goods and software and addressing planned obsolescence (see EUROPE 11822).
MEPs stress the need for greater account to be taken of SMEs, start-ups, young entrepreneurship, social economy enterprises and also the creative industries – these latter having been added in an amendment. They highlight the need to allocate “sufficient financial means for the industry sector” in the next multiannual financial framework. Parliament underlines the need for continued open international trade and calls on the Commission to “assess the adequacy” of market definitions and the current set of EU competition rules and to “pay more attention” to the role of foreign-based state-owned enterprises that are supported and subsidised by their governments in ways that the EU single market rules do not allow for EU companies – calls that respond to the large-scale dumping of which China is regularly accused, for example in the steel sector.
Resolution hailed by steel sector. Eurofer, the European association representing steel manufacturers, has welcomed the resolution, and in particular that it addresses other very important EU policies (tackling greenhouse gases, the circular economy and unfair business practices). “Industrial policy needs to act as an umbrella for all legislation affecting industry, and not vice versa”, said Eurofer Director General Axel Eggert.
The resolution adopted was supported by the EPP, S&D, Greens/EFA, ALDE, and ECR Groups. The GUE/NGL and ENF tabled two separate resolutions which, de facto, failed.
Plans for a holistic industrial policy have long been on Europe’s drawing board, MEP Anne Sander (EPP, France) told EUROPE, recalling that, in 2013, the then industry commissioner, Antonio Tajani, was keen to deliver just such a policy for the EU. The member states put the matter back on the table at the last Competitiveness Council (see EUROPE 11798) and again through the Berlin Declaration by the Friends of Industry (see EUROPE 11821). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)