{"id":462615,"date":"2026-08-19T10:23:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/08\/19\/lagarde-la-cina-ora-compete-con-leurozona-per-il-40-per-cento-dei-nostri-settori-di-punta\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T11:07:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T09:07:30","slug":"lagarde-china-now-competes-with-the-eurozone-for-40-per-cent-of-its-leading-sectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/08\/19\/lagarde-china-now-competes-with-the-eurozone-for-40-per-cent-of-its-leading-sectors\/","title":{"rendered":"Lagarde: China now competes with the eurozone for 40 per cent of its leading sectors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 China is increasingly a problem. For the eurozone and the EU economy, it is the biggest challenge requiring a decisive and swift response, because the country’s expanding reach raises issues of economic and industrial competitiveness and of influence on the international stage. The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde<\/strong>, has sounded the alarm: Europe\u2019s advantage over Beijing is shrinking. <\/p>\n

“Europe\u2019s strength in mid-tech manufacturing, supported in part by access to relatively cheap energy…is also being eroded,\u201d she said during her address to the International Business Council, the advisory body comprising around 120 of the world\u2019s leading chief executives, representing various sectors and regions, established within the World Economic Forum<\/a>. Specifically, Lagarde emphasised, \u201cChina <\/strong>has been steadily moving up the value chain,” and the result is that \u201cthe country now competes directly with the euro area in close to 40 per cent of the sectors in which we have a comparative advantage, compared with around 25 per cent in the early 2000s.<\/strong>\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Europe faces two problems: Chinese industrial and manufacturing growth outpacing Europe’s, and higher energy costs for the twelve-star economy, leading to a loss of competitiveness. “The cheap energy on which European industry once relied \u2013 including that from Russian gas \u2013 has faded,” the ECB President noted.<\/span><\/span> The extent of the damage to the European economy is such that \u201clast year, EU electricity prices for energy-intensive industries were on average more than twice US levels and around 50 per cent above those in China<\/strong>.”<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lagarde is therefore calling for swift progress on reforms to complete the sustainable and technological transitions that can  enable the EU and its eurozone to emerge from their current difficulties and to attempt to keep China at a distance, whose presence in the European Single Market is already too strong. To make headway, she urges the EU to overcome fragmentation within the single market: \u201cFirms still compete too much within national borders, which weakens the competitive pressure to adopt new technologies,\u201d Lagarde warns. Then there is a second barrier: \u201cfragmentation of capital markets.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In this regard, the European Commission\u2019s EU Inc. initiative, launched to remove barriers for businesses<\/a>, is a step in the right direction but, as the ECB President warns, \u201cEU Inc. only addresses one part of the problem.<\/strong>\u201d To curb China\u2019s advance, \u201cthe wider task is to remove the barriers that fragment the Single Market, so that competitive pressure and new technologies can spread more widely across existing firms too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ECB president warns about Beijing\u2019s advance: in twenty years it has gained a 15\u2011percentage\u2011point industrial power advantage over Europe. She renews the call to complete the single market and the capital markets union<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":462605,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25705],"tags":[26324,26430,26112,26152,25916,33392,26752,26151,25828],"class_list":["post-462615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-bce-en","tag-christine-lagarde-en","tag-cina-en","tag-energia","tag-imprese-en","tag-bank-central-en-en","tag-eurozone-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462616,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462615\/revisions\/462616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}