Europe's quest for competitive sustainability

Abstract

At a time of deep transformations, Europe is at a strategic crossroads that will define its near and long-term future. Europe needs to honour its commitments to achieve sustainability, while adopting decisive action to regain economic competitiveness and secure social and territorial cohesion. Europe requires a holistic and comprehensive action plan with measures in several interrelated fields to secure its competitive sustainability. Proposed actions cannot be adopted or assessed in isolation, without understanding the possible effects and trade-offs they may have on all the dimensions of competitive sustainability. To this end, the European Union (EU) has set out an ambitious policy agenda that is in the making. The EU Green Deal has identified the necessary commitments and defined the roadmap to achieve our ambitious emission targets. An EU Green Deal Industrial Plan is supporting and coordinating actions to secure the transition of energy-intensive industries, crucial for Europe’s economy, and the development of a nascent net-zero technology industry that is subject to sharp policy intervention in different regions of the world. In addition, Europe is preparing a new European Competitiveness Deal inspired by the recent reports by Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi, that will include measures to truly fulfil the internal market and adopt an investment and reform agenda to support all businesses and sectors by boosting our digitization and innovation potential while defining a pro-innovation and pro-competitiveness regulatory framework. The implementation of this ambitious action plan requires strong cooperation and coordination between the EU and its Member States and their regions, and concerted efforts between the public and private sectors and the creation of strong public-private partnerships.