Last January, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton reiterated the need to consolidate an internal defence market to ensure our security. ‘We started with munitions for Ukraine’, he stated. ‘We now need to broaden this approach to include a large-scale European defence industr...
As we start 2024, a very crucial year for European democracy with the upcoming EU elections on 6-9 June, it is worth hitting the pause button and reflecting on the costs of non-Europe. Otherwise, everything we have built over the past 75 years of peace, progress and prosperity could be doomed to...
Over the last few years, Europe's 22.5 million micro-, small and medium-sized companies have faced the biggest global crises since the Second World War: pandemics, supply and raw material problems, the war in Ukraine, energy deficits and, lastly, high inflation, the latest onslaughts of which so...
One just needs to check Copernicus satellite images to understand how regions across Europe are grappling with water scarcity. Scientists agree: summer droughts could become the norm in western Europe. Four of the past five summers have been extremely dry. An extreme heat weather event that woul...
As the dust settles on the last State of the Union address by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen before the end of her mandate, one thing is clear: Competitiveness is back on the agenda after years of neglect. The Commission has finally realised that the Europe framed by our foun...
Sweden’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union has just come to an end. It has succeeded in putting business and EU competitiveness at the top of the political agenda. A new long-term competitiveness agenda has been launched, together with a number of individual proposals for improving...
The energy crisis, mainly triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, revealed and identified some of the substantial weaknesses and disruptions in the EU economic system which has to be structurally improved and adjusted so that it can face similar exogenous shocks more effectively, mainly in te...
This year in June it will be twenty years since the Thessaloniki EU-Western Balkans Summit, when EU leaders solemnly re-confirmed Europe's commitment to the integration of the Western Balkan countries and reaffirmed their prospect of EU membership. Twenty years on, only Croatia has joined the EU...
Just days after the decisive breakthrough that will overhaul the controversial Northern Ireland protocol, a delegation of EESC members (Jack O'Connor, Tanja Buzek, Cillian Lohan, and Klaas Johan Osinga and myself) visited the UK. During the visit (6-8 March 2023), we all welcomed the progress th...
The EU and its businesses are in the midst of deep and acute crises and profound long-term transformation. Enterprises – large and small – are struggling with high energy prices, labour and skills shortages, the manifold requirements of the green and digital transitions, and the overall costs an...
