Brussels, 15/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - In the “Confrontations Europe Letter” for April-June, the President of Confrontations, former MEP Philippe Herzog, and the former Competition Commissioner Mario Monti talk about the challenges of a European industrial policy and the instruments likely to contribute to delivering the Lisbon strategy. “The concept of industrial policy will come up again, but it is striking that there is still a long way to go before it is realised (…) and there are many differences of opinion on sharing out the responsibilities to be undertaken”, says Mr Herzog, who predicts that with less state aid it will be trickier to achieve. Mr Monti stresses that in his view, the position of some Member States, who want to see more actions in favour of European competitiveness without granting the EU an adequate budget, is contradictory.
While public action is down to the national framework, control of the rules is a Community matter, Mr Herzog points out in order to underline the need to arrive at an EU with “complementarity of public action and market orientation around objectives and projects in the European general interest”. Is the prospect of a Community public action conceivable by limiting “the European budget to 1% of Community GDP as France says?”, wonders Mr Monti. “No”, replies Mr Herzog, lambasting those Member States who subscribed to the objective of lowering public aid “without thinking”. To get out of the impasse, “it would be necessary to compensate for that by raising Community aid”, particularly in favour of joint projects in the areas of innovation, networks and skills, he says. On the subject of programmes to encourage industrial innovation, proposed for France by Jean-Louis Beffa's report, Mr Herzog hopes that they will be “deemed 'euro-compatible' with the Commission's state aid policy”. This initiative anticipates aid in the form of targeted reimbursable advances for specific businesses and sectors, which derogates from the rule of aid horizontality which is supported by the Commission and which Mr Monti considers to be a “guarantee of equal treatment for the Member States”. It would however be possible to “work on this concept of horizontality to identify specific conditions in which targeted aid could be possible”, said Mr Monti, warning: if we want “aid to be better directed to the construction of a new economy, we should not be too flexible and generous in accepting aid built on preserving the past”. He lucidly points out: “this would be socially difficult to allow”. Acknowledging that in terms of control of concentrations “the Commission has not hindered the majority of mergers”, Mr Herzog stresses the importance of the economic analysis which is carried out for this type of operation. These evaluations would, in his view, benefit from taking account of the demands from some elected representatives and trade unions for a “strategic social dialogue” and participation from all the different business actors in strategic decisions. This is an issue on which Mr Monti admits to having “some reservations” and on which Mr Herzog acknowledges that it would “require a new economic culture of workers and trade unions”.