Vestager lays out blueprint for "free, fair and open" transition in speech

Many thought the coronavirus pandemic would have been behind us by the onset of the 2022 EU Industry Days, but the world had other plans. However, there are reasons to be optimistic for the future, as EU Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager laid out in her opening speech for the event.

She described "tests of endurance" for the bloc as the EU's single market continues to struggle in the face of the pandemic and the digital and green transitions.

Read more: 15 EU states spend more on fossil fuel subsidies than renewables

"This is a marathon, not a sprint", she said at the keynote speech preceding the main event, stating that many expected the worst effects of the pandemic to have not carried over into 2022.

"We can emerge stronger, but it is not a given, and the pandemic has highlighted many important lessons to learn from", she added.

Vestager suggested the entire EU must work together to tackle the key issues to be addressed at this year's event.

In particular, she brought to the fore a few major areas for improvement in the face of future crises:

• The importance of a resilient single market, which she states is essential for a "free, open and fair society". Vestager stressed that there are plenty of areas in the market where barriers and gaps still exist, such as the services and energy sector that could suffer severe pitfalls should another crisis on the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic happen again.
• She also revealed there were "strategic dependencies" that make the EU weak in times of crises and that the EU should "reduce dependence" on things the bloc relies on the most, likely referring to the reliance on imports for things such as semiconductors, which have seen significant shortages and production pitfalls due to a mix of the pandemic and digital transition - of which chips are an essential component.
• She also highlighted the necessity to "accelerate the green and digital transition", colloquially referred to as the "twin transitions" by the bloc, and delivering the EU Green Deal.

"In terms of policy, change typically happens slowly until it suddenly all happens at once as we saw with the onset of the coronavirus", Vestager said. "You should either have the right policies in place or risk getting swept away".

Read more: How industrial innovation can drive the European Green Deal

She also brought up the EU's commitment to the fight against the climate crisis.

"Even before the pandemic, in 2019, people saw the need to tackle the climate crisis. The science on climate change is clear, but many did not see the political visibility of the change needed", Vestager added.

One of the key announcements of this ten-minute speech were the plans the bloc had for dealing with some of the areas hit the hardest by the pandemic.

Perhaps the largest was a proposal of a new "single-market instrument" to allow for free movement and trade in the face of another major crisis, which Vestager assured is set to be announced later this year.

The first day of the EU Industry Days event will primarily deal with reigniting the EU's tourism sector, which was battered by the pandemic.

Many airliners started suffering massive losses at the height of the crisis. It was so bad in 2020 that over 5,000 key players in the industry signed a petition to get EC President Ursula Von der Leyen to end the lockdown restrictions in a bid to save jobs.

Vestager assured the event the EU was taking the threat to bloc tourism seriously and would be putting a greater emphasis on getting this sector back on its feet after a rough two years.

Read more: Looking beyond the semiconductor shortage

Finally, there was the affirmation of the EU Chips Act, a bid to increase domestic production of semiconductors in a bid to reduce reliance on imports from primarily Asian countries due to battered supply chains. Chips are not only essential in the manufacturing of consumer electronics - which have seen a demand boom during the pandemic - but also electric vehicles, which are essential in decarbonising transportation.

Interest in increasing chip production within the bloc has seen significant investment from a number of tech companies, including an €80 billion pledge by Intel and a €1.6 billion plant in Austria by Infineon.

More coverage of the 2022 EU Industry Days coming soon.

- To see our coverage of the 2021 EU Industry Days, use this link. Last year's opening speech can be found here.

Back to Homepage

Back to Politics & Economics