Von der Leyen touts two-speed Europe to press ahead with economic reforms
On the roadmap
If the EU is not moving fast enough on improving its competitiveness, a group of member states have to move forward alone, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday after lengthy discussions on the topic, write Barbara Moens and Alice Hancock.
Context: The bloc’s 27 leaders held a summit yesterday to discuss how to boost Europe’s economic engine. They will meet again in March, in the hopes of agreeing to definitive action then.
The new slogan for the nimble and competitive EU is an upgrade of the single market to “One Europe, One Market”, von der Leyen said, even though more than 30 years after the single market was established it is far from complete.
Von der Leyen said that in response to urgent concerns about the EU’s stagnating economic growth, she would present a “very detailed” roadmap “with a clear timeline and targets on when to deliver”.
European Council chief António Costa said the retreat led to “new energy and a shared sense of urgency”, including on deepening the single market, simplifying rules and lowering energy costs.
Enrico Letta, the former Italian premier who penned a report on the single market and attended the meeting, told the FT that the EU should now be “opening the third phase of the market in Europe”, after the European common market and the European single market.
But given the slow pace of reforms over recent decades, von der Leyen said that moving ahead with a smaller group of member states on tricky issues might be necessary to stop moving “at the speed of the slowest”.
French President Emmanuel Macron also said that if leaders could not move ahead with integrating the bloc’s capital markets before June “we will have to do enhanced co-operation”. The plan has been blocked by countries who do not want to hand over supervision of financial markets to an EU-wide body.
Letta, however, said that “enhanced co-operation can only be a last resort”.
Talk about moving ahead in a smaller circle showcases that despite a lot of talk on unification and convergence — and a show of unity between Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the start of the day’s retreat — deep divisions remain in von der Leyen’s “One Europe”.
The most contentious issues are joint borrowing, the extent to which the bloc should protect its market and whether to water down its flagship climate policy, the emissions trading system, which charges companies to emit carbon.