The EU's recipe for competing with Trump: €100 billion for clean industry and cutting bureaucracy

BrusselsThe European Union is losing competitiveness compared to the United States and China, and the idea that this is largely due to the volume of paperwork and regulations – especially environmental regulations – that companies working in the EU must deal with is gaining ground. That is why the European Commission has presented a package of legislative measures on Wednesday to simplify and streamline bureaucratic procedures of the community administrations. "Simplification is vital for Europe's competitiveness," insisted the president of the community executive, Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday.

The objective of this type of omnibus law, which will now have to be negotiated by the member states - the Council of the EU - and the European Parliament, is to promote the growth of European companies and attract new foreign investments, as well as reduce costs for companies. According to estimates by the European Commission itself, a 25 percent reduction in the administrative burden of companies as a whole and up to 35 percent for small and medium-sized companies is expected. The private sector would save around 6 billion euros each year.

In fact, in response to criticism from environmental NGOs and progressive parties, the European Commission claims that the reduction in environmental requirements will focus primarily on small and medium-sized businesses, which it believes are often overwhelmed by the requirements for accessing European funding. Brussels, on the other hand, argues that large companies are more capable of dealing with all these bureaucratic procedures and are the ones that have the greatest impact on the environment.

A major investment in clean industry

The European Commission also presented a roadmap on Wednesday to promote clean technology and, in this way, refloat European industry without giving up the climate objectives of the green agenda. Among others, Von der Leyen has announced the investment of 100 billion euros in this industry, although she has not detailed where this money would come from or in what time frame it would be disbursed. Along the same lines, Brussels advocates making the regulations on aid for member states more flexible and granting tax incentives to encourage private sector investment in, for example, the manufacture of electric batteries.

In addition, the community executive proposes a kind of European preference in public tenders affecting strategic sectors, such as energy or this type of technology. Brussels therefore advocates introducing criteria in public contracts that are not linked only to the prices of services, but to the sustainability and autonomy that it means for the EU if these works are contracted by community companies.

In this regard, the European Commission has presented another energy security plan that aims to achieve a reduction in energy prices, which sometimes reach four times those paid in the United States. The main measure proposed by this strategy is to reduce taxes on the energy sector, and recommends that member states reduce VAT on electricity to 5%, although in no case is this a measure that state governments must take compulsorily.