Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 18 January 2023 - Strasbourg

An EU strategy to boost industrial competitiveness, trade and quality jobs (debate)

  Henna Virkkunen (PPE). – Madam President, Presidency, Commissioner, dear colleagues, I am pleased to say that we are discussing enhancing the competitiveness of Europe. However, I want to underline that the way of boosting Europe’s competitiveness is not done by relaxing the state aid rules – not at all. In order to be competitive on the global markets, Europe needs successful companies, industries and jobs.

To achieve that, we need to have regulation that encourages investments and innovations in Europe. We have to cut red tape from our businesses, SMEs and industries. Here I find it very positive that Commission President von der Leyen has promised to perform a competitiveness check on all new regulations being introduced. This is an important step in the right direction.

Secondly, Europe needs to invest more in research and development. In this regard, we have fallen behind the US and China. And thirdly, we need to ensure that Europe has a skilled workforce. We know that the lack of skilled workforce is a crucial issue, especially in the digital sector, which is a sector essential for increasing our productivity and economic growth.