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So will die EU an Wett­bewerbs­fähigkeit gewinnen

Die FINANCIAL TIMES (FT) hat wirklich so getitelt: „The EU’s plan to regain its competitive edge“. Das ist eigentlich ein Widerspruch in sich selbst. Die EU redet seit dem Jahr 2000 darüber und fällt immer weiter zurück. Na gut, wie soll es denn diesmal klappen?

  • „Brussels is trying to devise another new strategy amid fears of being left even further behind the US and China. (…) former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi was returning to the fray to write a report on the state of the EU’s competitiveness and how to fix it.“ – bto: Das ist schon fast zum Lachen. Ausgerechnet von Italien soll die EU lernen. Ok, das war ein böser Kommentar, denn Mario Draghi ist unzweifelhaft ein sehr kluger Kopf. Dennoch…
  • „‘We need to look further ahead and set out how we remain competitive,‘ she said, introducing Draghi by rehashing his 2012 declaration that is seen as the turning point in the eurozone sovereign debt crisis: ‚Because Europe will do «whatever it takes» to keep its competitive edge.‘“ – bto: Na dann kann ja nichts mehr schiefgehen.

Und die FT fasst die Lage zusammen:

  • „The headline numbers are stark. The EU economy, in dollar terms, is 65 per cent of the size of the US economy. That’s down from 91 per cent in 2013. Per capita, US gross domestic product is more than twice the size of the EU’s, and the gap is increasing.“ – bto: Das ist einfach schlecht. Und trotz der verlorenen Jahrzehnte liegt Japan immer noch vor uns.

Quelle: FINANCIAL TIMES

  • „Drill down into the details and the story is the same. Take the list of the global top 20 technology companies; or the world’s top universities; or semiconductor manufacturing capacity: Europe lags behind.“ – bto: Und das mit jedem Tag mehr.
  • „At the same time, efforts to help the EU weather the worst short-term impacts of the twin Covid and Ukraine crises have created medium-term risks. An outpouring of state aid and financial support from Brussels to European companies has radically altered the ‚level playing field‘ between countries and their businesses once guarded as the central pillar of the single market. EU state aid expenditure rose from €102.8bn in 2015 to €334.54bn in 2021. Between March 2022 and August this year, Europe approved €733bn in state support, according to unofficial commission figures seen by the FT.“ – bto: Und das dürfte wenig bringen für die Lösung der Probleme.
  • „That push has been exacerbated by a desire to speed up the continent’s green transition away from fossil fuels and to invest in new, low-carbon technologies. It is also a response to competing programmes such as Joe Biden’s $369bn Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and longstanding state support offered by Beijing to Chinese rivals.“ – bto: Wir investieren aus edlen Gründen, die anderen wollen Geld verdienen und Wohlstand schaffen.
  • „Europe’s dilemma is preserving the strength of the single market, and the freedoms of movement, capital, goods and services, while competing with America, China, India and others, says Letta. (…) The desire for Europe to compete with the US, China and emerging powers like India, makes it ‚easy to destroy what we have built‘, he adds. That is in Letta’s view, ‚this idea of a level playing field and free competition, which has been very, very important until now.‘“ – bto: Um was es wirklich geht, ist die Umleitung von deutschem Geld in andere Staaten.
  • „One moment of truth for the EU was in the early 2000s, when the internet technology boom created dozens of major US conglomerates, but hardly any in Europe. In the decades since, EU companies have failed to come even close to the likes of Apple, Alphabet or Amazon, or challenge the scale of Chinese rivals such as Alibaba. Now EU policymakers are very concerned that the next technology revolution — in artificial intelligence and quantum computing — will similarly pass Europe by and further widen the gulf with the world’s two economic superpowers.“ – bto: Deshalb erhöhen wir Steuern und Regulierung, haben schlechte Universitäten und wollen alles regulieren.
  • „Part of the reason for that gulf, say officials and analysts, is a question of scale, and of failing to fully realise the potential of the EU’s population of 450mn — a group larger than the US population of 332mn. Another part is a lack of co-operation between EU innovators, companies and finance from across the 27-country bloc. (…) held apart by national bureaucracy, protectionist policies and poorly-implemented EU rules.“ – bto: Jetzt geht es bei den Geldern auch um nationale Vorteile.
  • „Every industry has its bugbears. (…) Many cite an increasing number of reporting restrictions they face as part of the bloc’s ‚Green Deal‘ — a push to rapidly transition the EU to environmentally friendly technologies.(..) In her State of the Union speech, von der Leyen acknowledged this complaint, promising that each new piece of EU legislation required ‚a competitiveness check by an independent board‘, and pledging new laws that would reduce ‚by 25 per cent‘ the reporting regulations at an EU level for companies.“ – bto: … was aber gegen die Natur der Sache geht.
  • „The EU’s state aid rules were drawn up to protect poorer states with less fiscal firepower from the richer states that would otherwise be able to pump cash into their national champions and give them an unfair advantage. That, say some officials from mainly southern and eastern countries, is exactly what has happened. Governments in countries such as Germany and France, in the name of economic stability for the entire bloc, have given their own companies the financial clout to outcompete their EU rivals, trampling on the safeguards of the single market in the meantime. Of the €733bn in state support that Europe approved between March 2022 and August this year, Germany accounted for almost half.“ – bto: Nicht, dass wir deshalb besonders gut dastehen würden.
  • „But commission officials defend their decisions on state aid given the threat they say is posed by the US’s green subsidies, which they say could prompt an exodus of EU companies across the Atlantic if Brussels is not able to at least compete with the cash handouts on offer from Washington.“
  • „(…) more than 12 years ago. Mario Monti (…)  set out 12 recommendations to relaunch the bloc’s single market. This led to several proposals but, in a telling indictment of the EU’s ability to acknowledge its weaknesses but inability to address them, few were actually implemented.“ – bto: So geht es weiter bergab.
  • „A suggestion to develop a ‚European professional card‘ to enable workers’ qualifications to be recognised across the EU — key to making the internal market more integrated — was introduced for just six professions in 2016. But it has not been expanded beyond this select few groups, which includes nurses and mountain guides. Brussels has also failed to implement the recommendations of more focused, smaller internal reports.“ – bto: Na dann.

→ ft.com (Anmeldung erforderlich): „The EU’s plan to regain its competitive edge“, 5. November 2020