The EU27 Heads of State or Government discussed the EU’s competitiveness and economic security on Friday 30 June. For several of them, it was an opportunity to reiterate the need to maintain the openness of trade that has been the EU’s strength to date. This message is clearly reflected in the conclusions adopted at the end of the meeting. While the leaders agreed on the need to strengthen the Union’s resilience and economic security, they called for “an approach that provides proportionate, precise and targeted answers to security challenges on the basis of a risk assessment”.
The European Commission presented possible courses of action in this area on 20 June (see EUROPE 13205/7) and the European Council is due to discuss the issue again at the Granada summit in October, according to the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez.
“We feel an interest to make progress on that and to make sure we don’t lose some very important elements for us, open autonomy, all the principles that helped us in the past building a strong economic model”, said the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Internal market and competitiveness
The recipe for increased competitiveness in the Union lies largely in a “deepened” internal market, the integrity of which is “preserved”, according to the EU27 leaders. This is why they are calling for an independent high-level report on the future of the internal market, to be presented to the European Council in March 2024.
They also call for a stronger industrial policy and a reduction in strategic dependencies, “in particular in the most sensitive areas”. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of them, for managers. This is why the EU must seize the opportunities associated with it, promote investment in and the use of AI, and continue to set global standards, they insist.
The pharmaceutical sector is also mentioned in the European Council’s conclusions, which invite the European Commission to “propose an initiative to ensure sufficient production and availability of critical medicines in Europe”.
In addition, the Heads of State or Government are calling on the co-legislators to speed up work on the ‘net zero’ industry act and the raw materials act. This was the subject of a political agreement in the EU Council on the same day (see other news).
Monitoring the impact of the US Inflation Reduction Act is also one of the actions requested of the European Commission by the EU27 in their conclusions.
See the conclusions adopted: https://aeur.eu/f/7un (Original version in French by Léa Marchal with the editorial staff)