Guidi: “With austerity, Europe 2020 targets will become just unrealised dreams”

“Without an expansionary change and without abandoning austerity measures, Europe 2020 targets will become just unrealised dreams.” Among those wishes, the target of getting 20% of the EU GDP from the industrial sector. Federica Guidi, Italian Minister for the Economic Development, chose these words to open the Informal Council on Competitiveness and Industry. The Europe 2020 Strategy aims to relaunch European economy through targets in terms of employment, innovation, education, social integration and climate/energy, to be achieved within 2020. According to the Italian Minister of Economic Development, “we risk a deep contradiction between industrial policies which would help Europe, and the frame of restrictive rules in which everything is supposed to take place.”

Minister Guidi said she expects a “change of pace” through the strengthening of the “architecture of the decision-making processes generating industrial policies.” Dealing with this, she suggested to reinforce the role of the Competitiveness Council, synchronising it with the Ecofin and the other Councils, in order to “guarantee the cross-coordination of European-wide policies.” Moreover, said Minister Guidi, it would be necessary to “create a High-Level Group for Competitiveness and Growth” with “a stable membership, and an elected Presidency of medium-long term,” able to create “a working programme for at least 18 months.”

Guidi underlined the need for the Union Industrial Policy to be “integrated into the climate-energy package, in order to favour a more efficient economy.” Minister Guidi has also called for “supporting high-intensity energy industry”. That is, those sectors where “the item ‘energy costs’ covers a remarkable amount of the production costs,” she explained. The way indicated by Guidi is to adopt “strategies promoting energy and gas infrastructural networks, electric industry, green chemistry, renewables.”

A further step forward which should be done “immediately” according to the Economic Development Minister, is “the integration of industrial and trade policies.” This target should be pursued on several levels: from one side, with “trade agreements” effectively “defending economic interests of European industry;” on the other side, with a “modernisation of trade defence systems.”