EU leaders agree to accelerate single market, in struggle to compete with US and China

European Union leaders agreed on Thursday on a wide-ranging set of commitments to improve how the bloc’s border-free internal market works so Europe’s businesses can be competitive and survive aggressive economic rivalry from the U.S. and China.

Meeting at a Belgian castle, the leaders, stressing how urgent it was to act, agreed to speed up the completion of a savings and investment union, review merger rules to help create European champions, make it easier for companies to get started and operate, and cut red tape throughout, top EU officials said.

“One Europe one market … this is our ambition,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said, adding that the EU executive would also crack down on additional layers of legislation that member states add when implementing EU decisions.

SPEED THINGS UP

Also, a preference for the purchase of European goods would be allowed in strategic sectors, von der Leyen told a press conference at the end of the meeting.

The European Commission will present in March a plan on how to proceed with this deepening of the European Union’s single market of 450 million consumers, with the aim for leaders to agree on a concrete timetable.

SAVINGS UNIONS

More specifically, von der Leyen said the EU executive arm would push on with a long delayed capital markets union that would allow to invest more productively some 10 trillion euros of savings now languishing on bank accounts.

“We agreed that we want to be done with phase one of the Savings and Investment Union, that includes market integration, supervision and securitization by June,” she said.

If it is impossible to move forward quickly with all 27 EU countries at the same time, the EU would push on with the project in a smaller group of at least 9 member states, she said.

European Council chief Antonio Costa, speaking of these decisions to speed up unifying Europe’s single market, said: “I think it’s really a game changer.”

TIME TO ACT

One after the other, EU leaders stressed it was urgent to act.

“We share the same sense of urgency. We have to accelerate. We are shaken by competition, sometimes by unfair competition and tariffs,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.

TACKLE HIGH ENERGY COSTS

Many leaders also stressed it was vital the EU acts on high energy prices, with Europe’s industry facing power prices that are more than double those in the U.S. and China.

While no decisions on this were made, the Commission will make proposals on how to proceed at the next EU summit in March.

CARBON MARKET

Meanwhile, von der Leyen defended the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS), saying it has “clear benefits,” after some government leaders called for the system to be revised.

“The emission trading system has clear benefits … The ETS has also elements that if the price for whatever reason is going too high, or the economic circumstances are tough, that you can with the ‘market stability reserve’, modulate the price,” she said.