During the “Europe 2024” conference in Berlin on Tuesday, 19 March, France’s Minister for the Economy Bruno Le Maire explained his vision for stimulating growth in Europe.
In his opinion, the EU absolutely needs to support innovation and put its regulatory efforts on ice. He insisted that there is “a vital urgency for our economy to restore a better balance between the production of goods and the production of standards”. This is what he calls “debureaucratisation”, which industry in the EU has been advocating.
Joint debt. The French minister also believes that supporting the production of goods requires making massive investments. He was surprised that the EU was not using joint debt to fund innovation and new technologies. According to him, it is a matter of “understanding the extent of the challenge” in the face of Chinese and American public subsidies.
CMU. Private investments must also be widely mobilised in order to pursue the EU’s strategic objectives, and this largely involves expediting the capital markets union (CMU).
During a question-and-answer session, Mr Le Maire felt that France and Germany could overcome the obstacles they are encountering on the CMU through “political will”.
“This is the first time that I’ve seen the German chancellor and the president of the republic put the CMU centre stage. Yes, there are two points of divergence: bankruptcy law and supervision. We must ensure that this supervision does not result in more complexity”, he declared, reaffirming his intention to make progress on the project by the end of 2024.
On Monday, 11 March, the Eurogroup had invited the European Commission to present initiatives on this issue during the next legislative period (see other news and EUROPE 13368/3). (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit and Léa Marchal)