Germany and France jointly propose a new EU agenda to boost competitiveness and growth over the next five years. Key priorities include strengthening the Green Deal and its Industrial Plan, reducing bureaucratic burdens, and fostering innovation. The plan addresses competitiveness challenges, including strategic dependencies and structural weaknesses, by promoting investments in green and digital technologies, improving the Single Market, and enhancing the EU's trade policy. Significant investment in both public and private sectors is proposed to achieve these ambitious goals.

MEGA - Make Europe Great Again

This European Commission communication addresses the EU's long-term competitiveness beyond 2030. It examines current challenges, including weaker productivity growth compared to other major economies and increasing reliance on global supply chains. The communication proposes nine key drivers to enhance competitiveness, focusing on strengthening the single market, boosting investment, improving infrastructure, fostering innovation, ensuring affordable energy, promoting a circular economy, driving digitalization, developing skills, and strengthening trade. The document also emphasizes the need for a growth-enhancing regulatory framework and utilizes key performance indicators to monitor progress across these areas. Finally, it calls for joint action from businesses and policymakers to secure the EU's future economic prosperity.

Today we analyze a recent Elcano Royal Institute report that analyzes the widening competitiveness gap between the EU and the US. Using nine key performance indicators from the European Commission and additional metrics. The authors assess EU performance in areas such as the single market, access to capital, public investment, R&D, energy, digitalization, and education. The analysis reveals significant EU weaknesses, particularly in digitalization and R&D spending, while highlighting relative strengths in renewable energy and trade surpluses. The report also examines factors like productivity, regulatory burdens, and company size contributing to the disparity. Finally, it concludes with observations on the need for improved EU policies and a more efficient public sector to bridge the gap.

This McKinsey Global Institute article assesses Europe's competitiveness in a new geo-economic era. While Europe excels in sustainability and inclusion, its economic growth lags behind the United States, creating a significant prosperity gap. The authors identify seven key areas impacting competitiveness—innovation, energy, capital, supply chains, talent, size, and competition—and propose ambitious, albeit challenging, goals to address these weaknesses. These goals necessitate higher investment, strategic policy changes, and collaboration between businesses and policymakers. The ultimate aim is to boost Europe's economic performance while maintaining its commitment to sustainability and inclusion.

An online community led by Philipp Herkelmann proposes the creation of "EU-Inc," a unified, digital-first private limited liability company structure for the European Union.

Let's deep dive into this initiative, a proposed shortcut to work around the drawbacks of Europe in the areas of creating, funding and running businesses on the continent.

This aims to address the challenges of fragmented national regulations by establishing a standardized corporate framework governed by EU regulations. Key features include no minimum capital requirement, flexible share structures, and streamlined cross-border operations. The initiative seeks to enhance Europe's global competitiveness while respecting member state sovereignty. Supporting tools like an EU registry and dashboard are also proposed to facilitate the process.

The EU-Inc website: https://proposal.eu-inc.org/14d076fd79c581199761dd7e8b020774?v=14d076fd79c58146b048000caeed686a

This report by Enrico Letta assesses the European Union's Single Market, identifying challenges to its effectiveness and proposing solutions. It emphasizes the need for increased economic security, a strengthened rule of law, and deeper integration across various sectors, including finance, energy, defense, and healthcare. The report advocates for regulatory simplification, enhanced digital infrastructure, and greater SME participation in the Single Market to achieve sustainable economic growth and prosperity. Finally, it stresses the importance of financial integration and addresses concerns about regional disparities within the EU.

Analyzing Mario Draghi's report to the European Commission: "The future of European Competitiveness" (September 2024)

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