'Competitiveness': inside the troubling corporate blueprint for the coming Commission

It has been a great summer for the corporate lobby groups swarming around the EU institutions, particularly those able to influence the bigger strategies of the Union. On 18 July 2024 the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen released her political guidelines, which set out the main priorities for the next five years. Several concerted corporate lobby campaigns have heavy fingerprints all over the text. As a consequence, we risk a disastrous half-decade of liberalisation and deregulation, while climate change, the environment, equality and social rights are put on the backburner – all in the name of ‘competitiveness’.

Big business groups have been campaigning since June 2022 to put ‘competitiveness’ first, pressuring governments and the Commission to put deregulation and ‘completing’ the Single Market at the heart of political affairs. Still, von der Leyen’s often diplomatic, sometimes rosy rhetoric, often sends a mixed or opaque message which makes it hard to discern the underlying direction of travel. 

To get a true grip on the implications of the guidelines, we examine the pressure from corporate lobby groups, take a look at the main players, and their demands and arguments over the last few years. To understand the logic behind their reasoning, or the lack of it, we also take apart their preferred concept: competitiveness. Because all is not what it seems. That will allow us to begin identifying the challenges progressive movements in Europe face, and there are plenty of them: sweeping attacks on climate policies, on data privacy, endless measures to keep the fossil fuel industry running, risky liberalisation of financial markets, to name but a few. Often to be implemented by letting bureaucratic procedures trump democratic debate. 

A big leap requested by traditional powerbrokers

Corporate Europe Observatory has scrutinised three key business campaigns in detail. Two of them are ‘usual suspects’ – the powerful club for the chief executives of some of Europe’s biggest companies, the European Round Table for Industry (ERT); and BusinessEurope, the employers’ organization. In June 2022 they issued a joint statement which marked the start of an intensified push from business to change the overall EU agenda. This was four months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to energy prices so high that it made businesses cry out for bold initiatives to secure cheaper energy, less regulation, and more generally a support for the ‘competitiveness’ of European businesses. It led to a unity on the business side, even if some of the campaigning would later unfold in separate camps. 

The ERT developed its ideas with the October 2023 publication of its ‘vision paper’, ‘Securing Europe’s place in a new world order’. According to the ERT, Europe’s “place in the new world order is no longer assured. Having been at the vanguard of industrial development and innovation in the last century, our continent’s competitiveness has faded.”

The cure for this supposed slump two decades in the making, is a revamp. Business is looking for the kind of bold initiatives spearheaded in the 1980s when Jacques Delors’ Commission allowed the newly formed ERT to step in and basically write the script for treaty changes with the Single Act. “A Delors Moment” is what the ERT and other business groups are looking for. 

And to secure a broader base, the ERT gathered a cluster of employers’ organisations, and national and European lobby groups for specific sectors, around its projects in the Europe Unlocked campaign, set up to make the Single Market, cheap energy, and ‘competitiveness’ the top priorities of the EU in the next term (2024-2029). 

Like the ERT, the employers in BusinessEurope went for big wins in their ‘Reboot Europe’ campaign, to course correct an EU they perceive as giving too little attention to the interests of businesses. “During the last 5 years, the European Union has focused on dealing with the COVID crisis, the war in Ukraine and regulating the green and digital transitions. During the next cycle, the EU will need to focus on improving Europe’s competitiveness and attractiveness as a business location…” What needs to be done, according to the ERT and BusinessEurope, is to replace this era of regulation as they see it, with an era of rolling back regulation. 

Antwerp Declaration- the energy-intensive industry weighs in

While both the ERT and BusinessEurope are standard bearers of messages from the broader corporate world, the third important coalition is new in the game. It is run by one of the most powerful trade associations on the Brussels lobbying scene, and the second biggest spender after lobbying consultancy Fleishman Hillard: the chemicals lobby group CEFIC. The scope and ambition of the coalition, though, goes well beyond sector-specific demands. 

The coalition is the product of a coordinated campaign to assert the interests of industry and big farmers in the face of EU climate regulation. Thanks to an alliance with conservatives in the European Parliament and at member state level, they were able to build a triangle that defeated important parts of the European Green Deal. The Farm to Fork strategy to promote sustainable ecological agriculture was put on the back burner, the strengthening of chemicals regulation was dropped, and the attempt to agree on reduced use of artificial pesticides was defeated in the European Parliament.

Emboldened by success, CEFIC began campaigning on bigger demands. In October 2023 it launched a statement with 8 other industry associations – a mix of energy-intensive industries and renewable energy industries – to ask for a ‘Clean Industrial Deal’.  Among their demands were cheap energy and support for what they called “clean technology”. CEFIC went on to spearhead an alliance of mainly energy-intensive industries (eg chemicals, steel, paper, cement) to demand similar policies that would support industry as a whole and energy-intensive industries in particular. To hear lobbyists from those sectors speak passionately about ‘clean technology’ will sound strange to those who have followed their actions. For the last two decades, they have fought tooth and nail against climate policies, not least those intended to have them engage in cleaner production. Clearly, there has been a change of strategy, one that may speak about ‘clean technology’, though still with the price tag and competitiveness as the core principes. This change was to become the basis of the Antwerp Declaration, from February 2024,  a demand for a “European Industrial Deal”, “a comprehensive action plan to elevate competitiveness as strategic priority,” reflecting most of all the demands from energy-intensive industries.   

The parallel track to influence

The overarching theme of ‘competitiveness’ is repeated ad nauseam in all these groups’ texts. And their major impact on von der Leyen’s plans for the next five years is clear from her guidelines for her second term. Unless challenged by new developments, we are looking at five years with the ‘competitiveness’ of industry first on the agenda; and the climate, the environment, and workers will pay a price. That’s because in the EU ‘competitiveness’ is a watchword which excuses everything – in particular the attack on sensible regulation of business – which is now set to become an even more prominent leitmotif.

It would be an error to see this as an outcome of the shift to the right following recent European elections. On most points, the guidelines are the result of existing exchanges between the Commission, the Council, and business lobby groups over the past two years. This level of decision-making follows a different path and logic than parliamentary debates or elections. It has unfolded through bilateral meetings, conferences, advisory groups with business groups set up by the Commission, and interactions on reports, in particular one on the future of the Single Market by former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. 

As the Commission is the only institution that can table draft laws and draft political initiatives for the Parliament and Council to debate and vote on, these guidelines are already a sign of the wind blowing in their direction. What the European election results do mean, is that corporate lobby groups and their allies will have an easy time. A strengthened far right, and at least equally important, an emboldened Conservative/Christian Democrat movement will stand ready to help. 

Different but united

Big corporate lobby groups do not always stand together. There are often nuances of opinion that create splits, and given the variety of interests represented by the ERT and BusinessEurope – big and smaller companies, energy intensive and not – you would expect differences to emerge. BusinessEurope makes more of an effort to speak on behalf of SMEs, and the ERT will always have the interests of the biggest companies at its core. 

Additionally, the Antwerp Declaration is largely energy-intensive industries’ (eg chemicals, steel, paper, and cement) demands. Along with the fossil fuel industry, these are traditionally the staunchest enemies of climate policies, and the Antwerp Declaration has given them a forceful voice to counter the green transition and commit the EU to cheap fossil energy. But if there are disagreements, they have been kept out of the public domain. The degree of unity and common messaging has been a surprise. 

What could have caused frictions is the question of state aid. The Antwerp Declaration asks for financial support from the EU or member states, and traditionally that is supported by neither the ERT nor BusinessEurope. Over the course of 2024, both have issued statements with warnings about the ‘trade distorting’ effects of such measures. While tax breaks and support for research and development has always been welcomed, direct support for production is a no-go for the two, whether from the EU or member states. It would not have been unexpected to see arguments evolve in the business community. But they haven’t. 

BusinessEurope now advocates ‘carefully targeted’ state-aid, something the ERT would traditionally warn against. And in fact, the latter’s Europe Unlocked campaign has been very outspoken against relaxation of state-aid rules, and more generally against an “interventionist industrial policy”. According to them, the “green and digital transitions” should not be used as “an excuse to water down the rules” on state aid: “Quite the opposite.” “The best way to meet these challenges is to harness the innovative potential of Europe’s private sector,” the Europe Unlocked campaign stated in March 2024. Still, the ERT itself, by far the most powerful player in Europe Unlocked, has included tangible nuances in its key report from 2023, such as the idea that state aid “can be indispensable for early-stage innovations for the digital and green transitions as well as for key strategic sectors when market forces alone are insufficient,” and that state aid can be used as “a short-term, targeted measure during transitions and market failures”. The ERT has even allowed the chief executive of TITAN Cement to be its main voice on energy, and to signal support for the Antwerp Declaration. 

Long story short: business groups stand united in their views on the next five years, even if their priorities differ slightly, and even if some of them appear uneasy about state aid. They all adhere to a deeper and strongly enforced Single Market with many negative implications for regulation of companies in the public interest, they all ask for reforms of decision-making to prevent EU laws they dislike, and more generally they all consider ‘competitiveness’ to be the top benchmark for success, and they are all asking for the EU to play a bigger role in financing new adventures for big business. 

That unity leads to strength, and to the ability to set and dominate the agenda. They have used that power to put ‘competitiveness’ on top of the list of guiding principles for the next five years.

Competitiveness: the paper bag to put things in

‘Competitiveness’ has been a dominant theme in debates over the future of the European Union since its founding in 1993. These days the term is splattered all over any plan from the Council, the Commission and business groups about the next five years or more. 

Yet there is no consensus about the definition of the term. Despite being used in procedures on member state economic policies, the precise meaning of the term is often contradictory or wobbly. Take the European Semester, the annual scrutiny of member states’ economic policies that can lead to demands for national policies to be changed to bolster the competitiveness of the economy. The precise meaning of the term here is “malleable with conflicting accentuations”, according to an academic working paper. The authors argue that the current approach under the European Semester on economic policies can even be detrimental to competitiveness in some parts of the EU and make the political promise “to foster social convergence” more difficult to achieve, as some member state economies actually suffer from the prescriptions developed by the Commission to strengthen ‘competitiveness’. 

Such contradictions are not rare. One of the central – and oldest – claims is that high taxes hurt competitiveness, a myth that has made economists wonder how the Nordic countries can enjoy both high taxes and a high ranking on competitiveness. They conjure up the famous conundrum of the bumble bee: according to classical thinking those economies were not supposed to be able to fly, yet they do. But even if discredited by facts, BusinessEurope continues with its claims unbowed. In its annual publication on the changes it would like to see in the EU and in member states, the ‘Reform Barometer’ it recently lamented that “EU Member States continue to lag behind internationally regarding tax competitiveness,” citing higher taxes in the EU than in the US. 

The lack of clarity and the inherent contradictions of the term, often leads to claims with little basis in reality. As when BusinessEurope argues that slighter GDP growth in Europe compared to the US, is a sign that Europe is less competitive. That is a stretch on so many counts. For a start, it is not a problem in itself for the EU economy, that the US economy is going strong. Still, such stories appear to be effective to persuade decision-makers to take drastic measures to support industry. 

The heart of the matter, then, is something very mundane and simple. More than anything, ‘competitiveness’ is not so much about actual competitiveness as it is about making politicians act as desired by big business. And no organisation knows that better than the ERT, which has pushed the term systematically for decades. When Dutch academic Bastiaan van Apeldoorn interviewed “a very senior ERT official” in 1996 on the meaning of the term, the answer he got was revealing. Competitiveness is “a useful word but it is really like a paper bag into which you put things.”[1] 

Why it is dangerous

‘Competitiveness’ is not a clear scientific concept but a fuzzy and politically loaded term. The implicit assumption is that whenever companies in other parts of the world enjoy certain privileges – lax environmental regulation, lower taxes, subsidies, lower salaries etc – this offers a competitive advantage against European companies. The concept is linked to globalisation and the idea that when corporations gain a privilege in China or the US, the EU better follow suit, or ‘we will lose the race’.

While this thinking can be used to set back the green transition, and cut welfare for workers, ironically in the long or medium term, it can actually lead to long term loss of competitiveness too. Take the European car industry that successfully fought off meaningful fuel consumption standards for two decades. When such standards finally began having an effect, industry began adjusting by eg developing light vehicles. Still, many years had been lost – leaving the European car industry so exposed to competition from subsidized Chinese or American electric vehicles, that they staged a campaign for more public support and for tariffs to be imposed. Had decision-makers had the nerve to go against the car industry on fuel consumption 20 years ago, it would have given a strong incentive to develop sophisticated electric vehicles, and hence supported the long-term competitiveness of the car industry.

To hear the corporate lobby groups’ jargon, pursuing ‘competitiveness’ is for the good of everybody. In reality their vision is steered by vested interests and short termism. Making ‘competitiveness’ the leitmotif for the EU opens the door wide to putting vested interests at the steering wheel and relegating crucial public interests to the back seat. 

To take just a few of the topics at the top of the ‘competitiveness’ agenda: it may be good for the competitiveness of Big Pharma to strengthen intellectual property rights (patents), but it leads to higher prices on medicine (and a burden for European public heath – something that actually increases the labour shortages big business is currently lamenting). How does that in a wider sense make Europe competitive? It may serve European tech companies to eradicate any limit to creativity with artificial intelligence, but workers may pay a price through robotization and layoffs (that could cause damage to EU economies) or see their work life be dominated by algorithms that ignore basic needs. 

Similarly, it may be good for large services multinationals to ‘remove all barriers in the Single Market’, but recent EU history has shown how this can lead to a race to the bottom and an attack on democracy.  Take for instance, the Services Directive, over the years, it has been used to stall attempts to protect small businesses from mega shopping malls, to delay action on short-term rental platforms’ silent commercial usurpation of flats in cities, and undermining of public regulation of crucial services, including nursing homes. Furthermore, the Commission has made an attempt to use the Directive as a lever to obtain veto power over decisions on services, even at the local level. In 2019 they failed, but the idea to exert bureaucratic power over elected assemblies at the local, regional and national levels is by no means a thing of the past: it is at the core of business efforts to curb ‘gold plating’, ie more ambitious rules at other levels of government than the European. 

Bias and misdiagnosis

The risk of seeing all real or invented ills of the economy through the coarse and biased competitiveness prism favoured by industry, are obvious. It allows corporate interests to reign supreme over other considerations. That is a problem on its own terms: who would want a society with the sharpest, globally super competitive megacorporations, if surrounded by poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, with a clock ticking fast on climate change, and a dysfunctional political system invaded and dominated by vested interests? Some would, but most would not. 

And there is more to it: viewing everything through this prism leads to misdiagnosis and false solutions. To mention a few points about some of the main themes addressed in business statements and official documents alike:

• Energy is expensive in the EU. Everybody knows that after the inflation and energy crisis. Expensive gas became the determining factor of energy prices, thanks to the weird quasi-market developed in the EU. Yet, the suggestion to do away with a dysfunctional system that has favoured the gas industry is not on the table. 
• Further on gas, while the dependency on Russian gas of, in particular, the German economy, has proved to be an ultimately very costly affair, we are not looking at plans to end the dependence as such. The buzz word is to diversify supplies – often imports from other repressive regimes. The inherent long-term risks are not contemplated.
• There is a lot of talk about the investment crisis – the fact that private investment is far behind the US. Still, important factors are left out entirely. The numbers show that Europe began lagging behind around 2010, which makes sense: that was at a time when the EU imposed harsh austerity policies on member states, leading to not only impoverishment and tougher conditions on the labour markets, but also to an economic slump from which some member state economies have not recovered. Still, abolishing austerity policies is not on the table.
• There is a panic evolving around clean technologies in the face of a strong Chinese industry and US subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. European companies are not necessarily on top. While renewable energy has been on an upward path for a while, there is nevertheless a story of neglect at play. Both at the EU level and member state level, decision-makers and industry have been obsessed with the idea of finding technofixes that would prolong the life of fossil fuels, instead of introducing bold state financed and democratically developed programmes for renewables. While we are now looking at a concerted effort to support ‘clean technologies’, a pattern is repeated: industry sets the priorities, and they are full of false solutions, developed to underpin the continued use of gas. 
• Finally, there is the question of Europe’s energy-intensive industries, and their amazing ability to wag the dog. The most glaring example is the dysfunctional the Emissions Trading System (ETS) – often dubbed the corner-stone of EU climate policies –given many industries have received free quotas to such an extent that it has been highly profitable to many of them. As a consequence, they have had little or no incentive to transition into cleaner technologies. Who can wonder, then, that the EU is not the epicentre of eg cleaner cement production? Despite all the rhetoric from their lobby organisations, they are not at risk because their competitiveness has been impaired by tough regulation. Even so, the ‘competitiveness’ of energy intensive industries is a main theme in von der Leyen’s plans, and as before, those plans are pretty much designed by those industries. 

Antwerp as a new key partner

Making competitiveness the guiding principle for EU law-making is not a new idea. But its emphasis in von der Leyen’s guidelines takes us to a new level not seen in a long time. That’s largely due to the level of privileged access to decision-makers the three corporate coalitions have enjoyed in both the Council and the Commission is unmatched and comprehensive. 

When the Antwerp Declaration and the demand for an Industrial Deal was launched in February 2024, it was in the context of a meeting between von der Leyen, Belgium Premier and Council Presidency leader de Croo, and up to 60 industry leaders, on the chemical giant BASF’s premises in the second city of Belgium. 

The Antwerp Declaration soon began to set the agenda for both the Council and the Commission. When the Belgian Presidency wrote a report in June on its work towards a Competitiveness Deal, it said about the two most important meetings on the future of industrial policy, that the Antwerp Declaration had “fed into the preparations of the conclusions”. 

In April 2024, when Economy, Finance and Enterprise ministers of the three most powerful governments in the EU – Germany, France, and Italy – met in Meudon, France to discuss and agree on a comprehensive platform for the coming years, with leaner regulation of industry, and a deeper Single Market, they “recognized the relevance of the Antwerp Declaration”. According to French economic and finance minister Bruno Lemaire, the agreement includes the most far-reaching demand in the Antwerp Declaration, an Omnibus law intended to go through all existing European law and “take corrective measures” to support ‘competitiveness’. “I will be proposing an omnibus directive to review all European standards with a view to simplifying, streamlining, or abolishing them,” he said.

The special relationship with the ERT

Whereas the Antwerp Declaration is a new kid on the block, the European Roundtable for Industry has been around since 1983, formed by chief executives from the likes of Philips and Volvo with strong support from the European Commission. The latter wanted a discussion partner representing big industry to advise on the bigger picture of EU development. Today, the ERT is a club for chief executives from 60 of the biggest companies, that retain the privileged access to decision-makers that it was set up to enjoy. As for the Commission and von der Leyen, the ERT has retained its special status. When asked by a journalist from Dutch investigative group Follow the Money about a high number of meetings between von der Leyen and the ERT, the reply confirmed the special relationship: “The President as head of the Commission meets regularly with representatives of these major employers… to discuss issues of strategic interest.” 

One example is the meetings held regularly between the ERT, the French President, the German Chancellor, and the President of the Commission. On the last occasion, the meeting took place in March 2022  in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and top of the agenda was what to do about energy supplies, gas not least. ERT had ideas about next steps, and von der Leyen moved fast. She quickly brought forward the ERT’s proposal to set up an industry-dominated advisory body to guide the Commission in its attempt to reduce dependency of Russian gas.

The ERT has easy access to other Commissioners too, and it showed in the months before the publication of the guidelines. A conference on the Single Market on 22 February this year with Competition Commissioner Margrete Vestager, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Lahbib from the Belgian government – holding the Presidency at the time.

A meeting in March with Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson on the Single Market and energy indicates that the ERT is still on the case, and that the Commission is going through intense dialogues with business on energy.

On the Council side, the ERT is always quick to respond to new and powerful players on the EU scene, as with a meeting with Hungarian President Viktor Órban in June 2024, shortly before his government assumed the Council Presidency, and a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni a month later. 

BusinessEurope

BusinessEurope too is a traditional partner of the institutions. It is the most frequent visitor to the Commission, and holds events with the EU Presidency and with the Council. In the run-up to the Belgian Council Presidency, it had events with Belgian ministers in November 2023, including Vice Prime Minister Paul Van Tigchelt, to prepare the following months, and a similar meeting with the Hungarian Presidency in June this year. Often, BusinessEurope is even invited to join Council meetings, as with a meeting on energy in July 2024. 

Commissioners appear keen to attend BusinessEurope’s events. Participation by top Commissioners at its annual European Business Summit seems assured, as with the November 2023 event that boasted 6 Commissioners and 11 top civil servants on the speakers list. Not to mention the annual CEO dialogue’s meeting with several Commissioners, that took place only ten days earlier, organized by BusinessEurope at the Commission’s premises. 

In sum, all three groups have been in regular contact with all main decision-makers during the time when the new term was being prepared – and for some of them the campaigning began more than two years ago. 

Two other inroads: the Letta report and the dialogues

The influence isn’t limited to direct contacts. In September 2023 former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta was asked to do a comprehensive report on the future of the Single Market beginning in September 2023. The ERT and BusinessEurope seem to take credit for the move – an offspring from the campaign they initiated in June 2022. 

The resulting report ‘Much more than a market’ launched in April 2024, came after countless meetings with business groups, not least BusinessEurope and ERT.[2] 

This whole effort paid off. Letta’s report had a heavy focus on the very demands planted repeatedly by business groups in the preceding months, as explained in a report from Austrian trade union think tank Arbeiterkammer. The Letta report served as a go-between between lobby groups and the Council and the Commission. On 17-18 April, only a few days after Letta had presented his report the European Council simply asked for the coming EU presidencies to take “the recommendations therein forward.” According to the Council, forceful measures are now needed to secure competitiveness, and to put an end to “over-regulation”.

In the months leading up to the presentation of the guidelines, then, von der Leyen was in one way or the other in a constant dialogue with business views, whether directly, through her fellow Commissioners, or indirectly through ministers or via Enrico Letta. Finally, there is the ‘Clean Transition Dialogue’ with industry in the energy, forestry, energy-intensive sectors, transport and others, set up to “pursue the implementation of the European Green Deal”. A series of 10 big meetings from September 2023 to April 2024, with the presence of either Ursula von der Leyen or Vice President of the Commission Maroš Šefčovič. On most occasions, if not all, the meetings were completely dominated by industry, as with the first dialogue in October 2023 on hydrogen.

These dialogues would help set the tone and define the content of von der Leyen’s guidelines on crucial issues. Looking at the Commission’s communication in which it takes stock of the meetings, we find the main headlines from the guidelines, including a “simplified regulatory framework”, abundant and cheap “clean” energy, massive support for building energy infrastructure, financing through capital markets, and more. 

Corporate fingerprints and 12 challenges

No wonder that in the Commission guidelines we find heavy fingerprints from the business groups all over the relevant sections about economic policies, climate and energy, finance, labour, environment, the Single Market, and regulation. And those fingerprints give us a hint about what will be coming down the road the next five years. Note, however, that these guidelines were written at an early stage, in the context of getting the approval from a majority in the European Parliament, and von der Leyen is not offering too many specifics, to both avoid upsetting the majority that supported her, and because not everything is fully decided in detail yet, obviously. But even so, the fingerprints are so numerous and clear, that looking at corporate lobby groups’ demands, offers a key to  challenges to climate and environmental policies, to social rights and even to democracy the guidelines represent. 12 challenges stand out: 

1. Completing the Single Market by ignoring other concerns

It has been a long-standing business demand for the Commission to create an all-encompassing programme to “complete the Single Market”. This time around, intense pressure from key business lobby groups began in June 2022 with a common statement, and it has continued. Ursula von der Leyen is listening: “We need a new momentum to complete the Single Market in sectors like services, energy, defence, finance, electronic communications and digital,” the guidelines say. It may look modest, but completing the Single Market in services is no small feat. ‘Services’ is most of the European economy, and one that includes a wide range of sensitive sectors, including health, transport, energy, and environmental services (eg water).

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there is a clear overlap between the sectors in the Commissioner’s guidelines and the business groups’ wish-list. Both BusinessEurope and the ERT have pushed for liberalisation of services as a top priority. Business groups have put particular emphasis on “energy, digital, capital, environment and defence” (ERT), on waste (all three), on telecoms (ERT and BusinessEurope); all of which seem to be covered in the guidelines. 

With this focus comes a risk that we will have rules in many new areas that will impose the four economic freedoms – free movement of goods, services, capital and labour power –  in a way that suppresses other societal concerns. Over the years, clashes between the market disciplines of the Single Market and the public interest has been a classic in EU politics, not least in the area of services, as briefly explained above. “Completing the Single Market” has always been the business slogan employed to ignore other concerns and interests in society. To see it back is worrying. 

2. A screening of all EU laws to favour business interests (Omnibus law)

Imagine if all existing rules were to be scrutinized and revised to fulfil the desires of business lobbies? Such a proposal was tabled by the ERT back in 2012, but at the time there was little appetite for it, and the ERT even backpaddled when confronted by the media. Today, it has become much more mainstream, in no small part thanks to the Antwerp Declaration that has put the demand on top of their list: “We ask to develop an Omnibus proposal to take corrective measures on all relevant existing EU regulations as the first piece of legislation to be presented in the next EU institutional cycle.” This drew support from BusinessEurope. They quickly garnered the support of the French, German, and Italian governments, and with von der Leyen’s political guidelines, they are getting much closer to the goal. Following the guidelines, the Commission will “stress-test the entire EU acquis. On this basis, we will make proposals to simplify, consolidate and codify legislation to eliminate any overlaps and contradictions while maintaining high standards.” 

“Maintaining high standards” may sound reassuring, but bear in mind that is not the kind of outcome business will be looking for. The guidelines are full of claims that you can have your cake and eat it. They should not be taken at face value, particularly not in the current context when there seems to be a consensus between business, Council, and Commission to take bold steps in the coming years in the name of competitiveness. 

3. Stopping ambitious measures at the national level

‘Gold plating’ has been a recurring theme for business for quite a while. That covers national measures that go beyond EU rules, sometimes in conflict with them, sometimes not. It can include, for instance, more strict rules on food quality, or it can be on limits imposed on Airbnb-style services to protect access to housing. BusinessEurope and the ERT would simply like to do away with that political space left to member states to regulate on their own behalf completely, through powerful enforcement measures and by sticking to either harmonization (exact same rules apply everywhere) or the ‘country of origin principle’ (companies abide by rules in force in their country of origin, not the country they happen to operate in). And unsurprisingly, the Letta report goes deeply into the matter as well, no doubt as a result of corporate lobbying. So powerful is this campaign, that the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) fears it will take effect in social and labour market policies as well, which would be disastrous to workers. 

Enforcement of Single Market rules by the Commission against real or imagined digressions, are already strong and comprehensive. Corporate Europe Observatory’s report on this subject disclosed a high number of procedures established by the Commission to enforce Single Market rules. In a joint letter to the Commission, 16 civil society organisations complained over evidence that “companies, lobbyists and industry associations are actively using enforcement mechanisms related to the Single Market to undermine environment and social protection initiatives at the national and municipal levels”. 

Still, von der Leyen – even if the wording in the guidelines is vague – is forthcoming when business groups complain over lax enforcement: “We will also address the patchwork of national regulations that makes doing business in different EU countries more complicated.” Just how much of a deregulation campaign this entails is unclear at this stage. But the Commissioner does not shy away from copy-pasting. And she takes a big new step by suggesting that there should be “a Single Market dimension” to the rule-of-law procedure, meaning the scrutiny of member states legislation that could in the end lead to fines or suspension of EU grants. 

Basically, stopping member states from ambitious measures is about how to enforce the existing EU rules, be it the laws (directives and regulations) or the Treaty. The Commission and business groups have had a longstanding exchange and cooperation about enforcement, and as it stands, the Commission enjoys ample power to step in and correct measures at the national level. But for many years, both have wanted more, as in the case of a regulation the Commission proposed in 2018 that would have allowed the institution to step in and annul draft decisions at local, regional and national level, even in the early stages of decision-making. The proposal was defeated, but business groups have demanded similar measures ever since. 

4. Bulldozing regulation of more than 99 percent of companies

Small and Medium Size companies (SMEs) have received special treatment for some years now. In 2010, Commission President Barroso spearheaded an offensive to exempt SMEs from certain EU rules to protect their interests. To the surprise and utter shock of trade unions, the Commissioner picked the crucial rules on safety at work as one of this targets. In the end, Barroso had to drop the idea, but the story shows just how far reaching special SME-initiatives can be. This time, business wants to have a forceful filter in place at the stage when the Commission is mulling new regulatory initiatives. Stricter “competitiveness checks” and SME tests are to be put in place. 

Bear in mind the official definition of an SME in the EU covers 99 per cent of all companies. On that, the guidelines takes a step further and suggests an expansion of exceptions for SME’s to slightly bigger companies, mid-caps with 250-500 employees: “We will introduce a new category of small midcaps and assess where existing regulation applying to large companies is too burdensome, disproportionate or a hindrance to their competitive development. Future legislation must also be simplified and designed with small businesses in mind and in a spirit of subsidiarity. This will notably be done though a new SME and competitiveness check to help avoid unnecessary administrative burdens, maintaining high standards.”

5. Impose obligations on Council and Parliament to block ideas that could cost for business

The obligation to have new ideas scrutinized through cost-benefit analysis before they are taken any further, has been a valuable asset for business groups since the tobacco industry managed to get that into the EU Treaty in 1999. So-called impact assessments are regarded by them as a valuable tool to block and stop progress for more than two decades, including for tobacco. That is why the latest agreement from 2016 between the three main institutions – Commission, Parliament, Council – was a setback for those fighting the many regulatory obstacles business groups are trying to insert into decision-making. For the first time, the Interinstitutional Agreement (IIA) included an obligation to have substantial amendments from the Council or the European Parliament investigated for its effect on businesses. That would lead to lengthy work on analysing amendments, it could potentially narrow the focus to real or imagined financial costs, and it would open another inroad to lobbying. 

The effect of the 2016 agreement, however, was too timid, according to business groups, so now they’re trying again. The ERT made that point in a letter to Letta, whereas BusinessEurope made it a key point in its campaign to “update and reinforce the commitments” made in the IIA, and again Letta – acting as a bridge between business and decision-makers – put it in his report.

Again, von der Leyen follows suit in her guidelines: “I will propose to renew Interinstitutional agreement on simplification and better law making so that each institution assesses the impact and cost of its amendments in the same way.  To ensure that we collectively follow up on enforcement and implementation, I will also ask each Commissioner to prepare an annual progress report for their respective European Parliament Committee and Council formation.”

6. Fresh work on chemicals to please industry

The European Green Deal came in 2019 with promises on chemicals under the slogan of creating a “toxic-free environment”. It included measures to “better monitor, report, prevent and remedy pollution from air, water, soil, and consumer products”, “measures to address pollution from urban runoff and from new or particularly harmful sources of pollution such as micro plastics and chemicals, including pharmaceuticals”, and to “address the combined effects of different pollutants.”

This cocktail provoked an aggressive response from the chemical industry with a lobbying campaign that got major results in 2023 when the Commission decided to drop a planned review of REACH, the chemicals regulation. Such victories must have emboldened the chemicals lobby, as they went on to spearhead the Antwerp Declaration. That campaign has heavy fingerprints on the guidelines, in that there is no serious talk about reducing the damaging impact of dangerous chemicals. In that area, the Commissioner sets out to put “forward a new chemicals industry package, aiming to simplify REACH and provide clarity on ‘forever chemicals’, or PFAS.”

You have to be a big optimist or merely blind to think this holds any promise. Von der Leyen is not envisaging a “chemicals package” to strengthen regulation, but a “chemicals industry package”, suggesting her new agenda is lightyears away from the reform she promised back in 2019. 

7. Arms race for competitiveness and as a symbol of unity

Defence is a big deal in Brussels – and has been long before Russia invaded Ukraine. The EU is building up military muscle, and a strong, ‘competitive’ arms industry is a key component. Business groups are united in their demand for a genuine Single Market for weapons, a nurturing of pan-European arms development, and ever more public funds to back this up. Von der Leyen’s Commission was always at the forefront of this issue and her guidelines echo the industry approach. 

There is a lot to be concerned about when the arms industry itself is put at the steering wheel of arms development, loaded with public money. The term “competitiveness” appeared in 2016, when a defence industry-dominated advisory group stated that both “internal demand” and exports were crucial to the competitiveness of the arms industry: “Domestic demand coupled with export success is essential in order for Europe to retain viable and globally competitive defence industrial players,” its report stated. This quest for competitiveness through exports meant that repressive regimes that should be barred from purchasing European weapons, were off the hook, beginning with Saudi Arabia.

This time around, the guidelines are all about internal demand, to be supported through common procurement, Single Market disciplines for arms, and through more common arms development. Big and profitable projects can certainly seem very appealing to industry, even if they do not reflect a need to eg safeguard the security of citizens. 

An example of this is a very costly project pushed by the main player in the arms lobby, the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD): a missile shield. The organization uses the Russian war on Ukraine as ultimate proof of the need to embark on an expensive project called “the European Sky Shield Initiative”, already supported by 14 EU member states.  Needless to say, the technology already exists – both American and European – and according to countless media reports, it is pretty effective. So why make such a big deal of it? And why spend a lot of money on a technology that exists, and which seems unnecessary to refine? 

Ursula von der Leyen’s response in the guidelines may give a clue. When presenting her “European Air Shield” – better to give it slightly different name to underplay the origins of the idea – to the European Parliament, she said “We need to invest more. We need to invest together. And we must set up common European projects. For example, a comprehensive aerial defence system – a European Air Shield, not only to protect our airspace but as a strong symbol of European unity in defence matters.”

8. Cheap energy with ‘de-carbonised’ gas

All the business coalitions emphasise ad nauseam that one of the main causes of their alleged lagging behind on competitiveness is high energy prices. Both the ERT and BusinessEurope have produced reports to indicate their preferred options, followed up by position papers and statements. 

It is perhaps worthwhile to stress, that the cry for cheap energy is almost always accompanied by a soothing adjective –‘green’, ‘clean’, or ‘sustainable’. But here and then, they slip up, as in BusinessEurope’s strategy pamphlet for use in their Reboot Europe campaign, where the call is flatly for cheap energy. 

While these two lobby groups do not explicitly target renewables or sustainable energy production, the problem lies in the false climate solutions that have long since made their entrance to the EU strategy, eg “de-carbonised gas”, meaning technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS), as well as a massive prioritization of hydrogen import and production. All this takes centre stage in the strategies proposed by the lobby groups. 

Over the years, both Corporate Europe Observatory and many others have complained that this is not a trustworthy strategy towards sustainable energy production, because the technologies are immature, not proven to work at scale, can lead to more fossil fuel extraction, and because they serve as fig leaves to legitimize big investments in fossil gas or gas related infrastructure – a move contrary to the calls of both the IPCCC and the IEA to halt investments in fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Still, CCS, CCUS and hydrogen are central to the big plans of business, and will remain so for the European Commission too. That much is made clear in von der Leyen’s guidelines: “We will scale-up and prioritise investment in clean energy infrastructure and technologies. This will include renewables and low-carbon technologies, grid infrastructure, storage capacity and transport infrastructure for captured CO2. We will also invest in energy-efficiency measures, the digitalisation of our energy system and the deployment of a hydrogen network. Beyond this, we must use the power and size of our market to secure supplies. This is why I will propose to activate and extend our aggregate demand mechanism to go beyond gas and include hydrogen and critical raw materials.”

Yes, there is a space for renewables. But it does not seem to be the priority.

9. Clean Industrial Deal for competitiveness – not for workers, perhaps not even for climate and nature

On the same note, it seems self-evident that when a coalition of predominantly energy-intensive industries head a successful call for an Industrial Deal, the prefix ‘Clean’ is not enough to suppress scepticism. As explained above, a “Clean Industrial Deal” was the term used by the chemicals lobby, before eventually joining other industries in the Antwerp Declaration, that called for “an Industrial Deal”. The backbone of that initiative are the energy-intensive sectors that have been a major stone in the shoe for EU climate policies for decades. The Emissions Trading System (ETS) was supposed to provide an incentive for them to begin a transition to cleaner technology, but instead they waged campaigns in the name of ‘competitiveness’ to get free quotas, and ended with such large amounts that many of them made huge profits for doing nothing.  

Now they are back with an even bigger plan: the public purse will have to provide ample support for them to develop and profit from new technology. This is to take many shapes, some of which Ursula von der Leyen is silent on at this stage, notably changes in state aid rules. On others, she is more vocal. The Antwerp Declaration is asking for a “Clean Technology Deployment Fund”, whereas Ursula von der Leyen proposes an “Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act” that may turn out to be identical. One of the other methods proposed by the Antwerp Declaration to get public support, is by changing the rulebook on public procurement. 

The current, massively important directive on procurement revised in 2014, covers an area worth 2.4 trillion euros, the sum spent by public authorities when they pay contractors for works and services. 

One of the methods to support new technologies is to have public authorities give priority to them when they issue public tenders for contracts. This is reflected in the Antwerp Declaration, when industry (CEFIC, the metal industry’s Eurometaux, steels Eurofer, Wind Europe and more) asked in an October 2023 statement for “public procurement and private buyer initiatives endorsed by the EU”. BusinessEurope is on the same line, and perhaps slightly more specific, requesting the implementation of “sustainability criteria for public procurement in all Member States would stimulate demand for clean tech and decarbonised products in Europe”.

Ursula von der Leyen agrees, announcing in her guidelines, “a revision of the Public Procurement Directive. This will enable preference to be given to European products in public procurement for certain strategic sectors. It will help ensure EU added value for our citizens, along with security of supply for vital technologies, products and services…. Looking ahead, the Clean Industrial Deal must enable us to invest more together in clean and strategic technologies and in energy intensive industries. The future of the clean and cutting-edge tech industry must be made in Europe.” 

Public procurement can indeed be a useful method to prioritise clean technology. The question is if the EU will be able to make it so, considering that this will be in a framework that emphasizes ‘competitiveness’ to the point of hysteria. There is a real risk the result in terms of a trustworthy transition of dirty industries, will be timid. And there is one more thing: with the revision she is tabling, she is letting down the trade unions. 

For many years, trade unions have campaigned to change the procurement directive to enable public authorities to impose social clauses on public tendering of contracts –  to demand decent salaries and good working conditions for workers. A revision in 2014 gave some hope, but in the end it proved ineffective. For a moment in April 2024, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) eyed an opportunity when the Commission, the ETUC and some industry coalitions – though remarkably not BusinessEurope – signed La Hulpe Declaration. That document reads: “We call for sustainable public procurement, including to promote collective bargaining. In this light, the directives on public procurement could be evaluated and, if needed, further steps could be taken.”

Perhaps a suspicion was already there in April in trade union ranks: the text is non-committal. If so, that would prove merited. In the guidelines, Ursula von der Leyen is going for a revision of the directive along the lines demanded by business, while ignoring the call from trade unions. 

10. Free flow of personal data – a step back for privacy

Business groups have been concerned about restrictions on data flows for good reasons: data flows are about money, crucial to the business models of plenty of companies. Industry has followed the evolution of EU laws on privacy with concern, as when lobbyists did their utmost to water down the strict EU law on data privacy, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They failed, mainly because the negotiations and the vote on the law coincided with the Edward Snowden affair. 

Since then, they have intensified campaigning on data. Besides calls for more investment in research and development, the ERT and BusinessEurope advocate strongly for “free flow of data”, and they are ambitious: they are trying to make the free flow of data a fifth economic freedom in the EU. Considering the centrality of the four freedoms – free flows of goods, services, labour, and capital – to the EU, this is no small feat. Yet, they have already made the demand mainstream: the idea made it to Enrico Letta’s report on the Single Market, with a full page dedicated to the fifth freedom. 

Asking for a free flow of data is a radical claim, and looking at some of the underlying intentions should put privacy activists on high alert. That includes the plan to make “Common data spaces”, that are to “allow data from across the EU to be made available and exchanged in a trustworthy and secure manner” in areas like manufacturing, public administration, and agriculture. But one area in particular where business groups have repeatedly demanded free data flows should ring alarm bells: the health sector. This demand is reflected in the Letta report: “the healthcare sector stands out prominently” as a sector that would benefit from the implementation of “a fifth freedom”. 

Data privacy concerns are also triggered by tech companies increasing moves into the healthcare sector. Tech trade association DigitalEurope published a 2022 paper on ‘Single Market barriers’ in which it complains about the "compounding of loopholes Member States are using to derogate from the main purpose of the GDPR, which is to harmonise data protection rules in Europe". DigitalEurope calls to "overcome constraints due to Member States’ use of Art. 9(4) GDPR", an article which lets member states protect highly sensitive data of patients including genetic, biometric, and health data. 

This industry push seems to have been successful as recently the proposal for a EU Health Data Space was passed which aims to free up medical data for research and development purposes including by the private sector with almost no possibility to withdraw consent for patients – a big win for industry. EPSU has called the Health Data Space a trojan horse for further privatisation of healthcare and the commercialization of health data by industry.

As for von der Leyen, her wording in the guidelines signals a big step forward for this agenda: she promises “a simplified, clear and coherent legal framework for businesses and administrations to share data seamlessly and at scale”. This quest for “seamless” data sharing is followed by a promise to respect “high privacy and security standards”, but somehow this sounds like classic von der Leyen, a world in which she and the Commission can do anything demanded by business without encroaching on other societal concerns. 

11. Capital Markets Union: towards more speculative activity on financial markets

The Capital Markets Union, underway since 2014, is supposed to help investment by creating a bigger market for eg securitization (pooling and repackaging of financial assets into interest-bearing securities), and it is supposed to provide other kinds of access to finance than bank lending. Thus far it has acted as a deregulatory force. Amazingly, in 2016, under the banner of the Capital Markets Union (CMU), the EU approved the sale of the very kind of speculative assets identified as a main cause for the financial crisis in 2007-2008, creating a new market where none existed. They were available for purchase from 2020.

In recent years, business groups have called for the immediate completion of the CMU with no reservations. To them, it is about quick access and about extra profits by getting involved in the securitisation trade. What is missing is, among other things, a harmonized set of rules on insolvencies, and a European supervisory structure. 

Whether it is actually to the benefit of the economy is another question entirely. Even if we look at the standard growth parameter, GDP, according to specialists in the field, there is little evidence of the boost a completed CMU is supposed to give to the economy. 

And expectations run even higher than growth. Ursula von der Leyen’s guidelines sees the CMU as a way to “unlock the financing needed for the green, digital and social transition.” Is there any evidence to suggest that liberalized capital markets will all of a sudden make those transitions appear more attractive, ie more profitable? Not much. Most main challenges in a green transition require massive public funding, the CMU will not change that, as indicated in a report from Finance Watch. Yet, von der Leyen portrays the CMU as a handy fix for a major political problem. In her guidelines she sees a big financial prize ahead: “Completing the Capital Markets Union could attract an extra EUR 470 billion of investment per year,” an estimate she and many others used in the months leading up to the publication of the guidelines. 

Where does that number come from, one may ask? It comes from a think tank called New Financial, funded by the financial industry. A pretty biased source. 

 12. Labour and social policy on the back burner

When Ursula von der Leyen presented her guidelines for her first Commission in the summer of 2019, it contained several seemingly important ideas on social policy and labour market policy/labour law, such as support for “those in work to earn a decent living, and those out of work as they look to find a job”, a legal instrument to ensure that every worker in our Union has a fair minimum wage, “ways of improving the labour conditions of platform workers”, support for those “who lose their jobs because of external events that affect our economy”, fight against poverty – a fairly long list of ambitious objectives to reconcile “the social and the market in today’s modern economy”. In comparison, her current guidelines are all but silent on improving the plight of workers, the unemployed, and marginalised groups in society.

The plans from 2019 were mild at best, but nevertheless the business community has had enough: BusinessEurope wants to see a move “away from a regulatory approach”, and to put “labour shortages” and “labour mobility” at the heart of this term’s labour market efforts. This tends to mean further attacks on pensions, stricter and less generous unemployment benefits, and initiatives to steer education more to the needs of businesses. Finally, there is the issue of ‘quality jobs’, a slogan which both employers and trade unions tend to cherish, but without a useful definition or a strategy to accomplish it. 

Sure enough Ursula von der Leyen has made labour shortages a priority, and the so-called ‘skills gap’ will dominate the EUs education agenda. Quality jobs are considered a desirable outcome of the Clean Industrial Deal. The guidelines do come with a “Quality Jobs Roadmap”, but clearly we are not talking regulatory initiatives. Add to this a repetition of last term’s Action Plan to implement the rather vague Pillar of Social Rights, and we have a pretty thin cocktail, significantly weaker than the guidelines from 2019. 

Most business-induced ‘Unions’ included

The above points are not the only list of demands about to be fulfilled by the Commission. The whole document is full of ideas that echo the desires of business lobby groups in all but name. European integration is about to be boosted the business way. In their statement from June 2022, the ERT, BusinessEurope, and three other coalitions called for no less than 7 new ‘Unions’: an Energy Union, an Environmental Union, a Digital Union, a Retail Union, a Banking & Capital Union, a Health Union, and a Defence Union. Of these, only the Retail Union (whatever that means) and an Environment Union are not explicitly, fully or partly included in the guidelines.

The three business campaigns generally had a lot to celebrate, not least the Antwerp coalition. Looking at the 10 demands in their declaration from early February 2024, everything is covered in spirit – an omnibus effort to go through the whole EU Acquis, ie all EU laws; funding of ‘clean’ technology; an energy strategy including  renewables, nuclear energy, CCS and CCUS to provide cheap energy; use of European funds to provide finance for infrastructure projects to support industry (energy, digital, and recycling); support for ‘net zero’ technologies, including through revision of public procurement rules; a Single Market for waste; a regulatory framework that prioritises innovation; and a plethora of measures to keep regulation at bay, not least those linked to climate policies. All these demands are included on the menu presented by von der Leyen. 

This was acknowledged by the protagonist behind the Antwerp coalition: “We are grateful that six months since the European Industry Summit, the collective voice of 25 industrial sectors represented by nearly 1,300 stakeholders that signed the Antwerp Declaration has been heard loud and clear,” said Marco Mensinck, the Director General of the powerful chemicals industry association CEFIC when the European Parliament approved the selection of Ursula von der Leyen for another term as Commission President. “A Clean Industrial Deal will safeguard the competitiveness of Europe’s energy-intensive industries,” he said with confidence. 

There’s more: the Competitiveness Deal

The hands of big business have been strengthened by skilful concerted campaigning. That is why CEFIC was voted ‘Best in Brussels’ by an initiative from the Brussels lobbying industry on 30 June 2024. On that occasion, Mensinck had no doubt as to why that was: the “glimmer of hope” provided by the Antwerp Declaration to his industry. 

The three business coalitions, then, can only be happy with what they have got so far.  Clearly, details are missing, lots of blanks to be filled out in the coming months, and in some cases the coming years. Even so, it is clear that the European Union will have its course adjusted. And probably more than meets the eye. For at least one big part of the puzzle is missing: the plan is to conclude a ‘Competitiveness Deal’, probably in early 2025, on the basis of a report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. While that is not mentioned in the guidelines, the conclusions from the meeting of the European Council in June this year leaves little doubt that it will happen: “The European Council looks forward to swift and decisive progress on all strands of the new European competitiveness deal by the end of the year and will remain seized of the matter.”

Draghi’s report is an ambitious one. The approximately 400 pages detail proposals in many sectors, and it brings 170 concrete proposals to the table. The gist of the report is largely in line with the guidelines as well as with demands from the business community – what sets it apart is its granularity. 

This is not the place for a full analysis, but a few points should be made about how the proposals underline the risks inherent in von der Leyen’s guidelines, not least those parts with the biggest fingerprints. Three examples are illustrative:

* On the point of “stress testing” the entire EU Acquis – a term used by Draghi as well – it is proposed to introduce an “evaluation bank”, a name for a periodical review of all EU all existing EU laws and regulations in order to “streamline” and “simplify”. Among other things, this is to result in the reduction of 25 per cent of current reporting obligations, 50 per cent for SMEs. 

* On the question of a stronger competitiveness test and SME test to ensure the Commission stays off endeavours that will increase “the regulatory burden”, the report suggests it could get a boost from the direct participation of “industrial operators”. That would indeed take the test to a different level. Offering industry to sit at the table to filter off ideas they dislike, could easily become disastrous. 

* When considering which files are particularly burdensome, Draghi lists quite a few. Audacity jumps out of the pages here and there, as when Draghi describes “sustainability reporting”, as “a major source of regulatory burden”. The files include: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Taxonomy Regulation, notably with its ‘do no significant harm’ (DNSH) assessment, the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and more.[3] Or to put it differently: practically every small step forward made in recent years is now targeted – candidates for a roll-back. 

The kind of Competitiveness Deal that will come from such ideas, is what corporate lobby groups have been yearning and campaigning for over the past few years. Not that they had not influenced the first Commission under von der Leyen – it enjoyed early support from corporate lobby groups, including the ERT and BusinessEurope – precisely because the heart of the strategy was up their alley. But other issues raised alarm bells for industry and all that – and so much else – is under pressure from now on. 

Challenges ahead 

In fact, to the challenges above should be added at least one not mentioned in the guidelines: the return of austerity policies. Ursula von der Leyen went through almost a whole term with the rules on member states’ deficit and debt suspended due to the pandemic, and hence with no intervention by the Commission to impose anti-social reforms. That era was put definitively to an end this summer when the Commission had a proposal approved by the Council to put Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia in the so-called excessive deficit procedure. This adds further constraints to member state economic policies in the years to come, and it adds pressure on welfare and livelihoods, which under the current circumstances could fuel further support for the far right.

That leaves us with plenty of reasons for concern. The past five years have hardly been marked by solid advances on environmental and climate policies, nor have they left us with less social inequality. But in comparison, the next five years are looking much more difficult. Led on by the quest for global competitiveness, we could end up seeing endless public funds being poured into false solutions, and massive deregulation that will create costs for society at large that may impair the ‘competitiveness’, it was intended to strengthen. While there is no doubt we will see large amounts of public money pour into energy infrastructure – allegedly to make energy both cheaper and cleaner – the fact that the effort will be dominated by the quest for competitiveness most of all, opens the door to a plethora of false solutions and a failure to stop disastrous climate change. Finally, in all of this, little or no attention is paid to welfare or working conditions. The re-introduction of austerity policies in parallel to massive support for  infrastructure projects and for businesses, makes up a cocktail that could also lead to even more support for the far right. 

The stakes are high, the challenges are daunting. However, this is looking at the situation at the start of autumn 2024. There are plenty of unknowns, including how citizens will respond to the increased corporate capture of EU decision-making. 

 

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[1] Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Transnationalization and the Restructuring of Europe's Socioeconomic Order Social Forces in the Construction of “Embedded neoliberalism”, Int. Journal of Political Economy, vol. 28, no. 1, Spring 1998, pp. 12-53. 

[2] Meetings include: A conference co-organized by BE on 28 November 2023, a meeting in Spain with the Vice President of BE shortly after, a meeting on 22 February 2024, a conference in Berlin between business leaders, including the head of BE and Letta in Berlin on 19 March 2024, and another debate between Beyrer and Letta at a Transatlantic business conference on 23 April 2024. Meetings also occurred with BE member organisations eg Lewiatan in Poland, and between a Letta envoy and the Belgian VBO. ERT held a conference on 22 February 2024 with the Single Market and Letta at the centre, a long parade of hot shots from politics, MEPs, Commissioners, former Commissioners. 

[3] Thank you to Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth Europe, for pointing this out.