How to Make Europe Competitive Again?

Slowing growth and productivity, high energy costs, demographic challenges, fragmented financial markets, and increasing global competition and protectionism threaten Europe's long-term economic prosperity. At the same time, Europe needs to mobilise huge sums of money to drive forward the green and digital transitions as well as its military build-up. How can Europe address its structural weaknesses and mobilise the necessary investments to strengthen its competitiveness and defence capabilities and become a leader in the technologies of the future? Atanas Pekanov discussed these questions in a high-level panel with Francis Fukuyama (Senior Fellow at Stanford University), Andreas Treichl (Chairman of the ERSTE Foundation's Supervisory Board), James C. O'Brien (former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs) and others.

"Europe needs urgent decision-making to complete the Capital Markets Union. This will enable the savings of European citizens, currently just sitting idle on bank accounts with low returns, to be redirected to more productive investments – so that European companies can thrive, instead of looking for better market opportunities in the USA. We have too long neglected and showed little progress on the Capital Markets Union, this should become a major political debate in the EU right now. Another urgent matter is the question of the next EU budget. In my view it should be considerably bigger – right now it is minimalistic at around 1 percent of EU GDP. It should focus much more on pan-European public goods, financing infrastructure, especially in the energy sector, defense, and R&D. This will help finally achieve some of the strategic autonomy, that Europe has long sought but has made little progress on, while also helping boost competitiveness", said Pekanov.