The Jacques Delors Centre’s Co-Director stresses that EU governments should not react with national subsidies on their own to the new competition reality. More European coordination is necessary.
Today's world has changed significantly: Security issues play a greater role and, from a global perspective, "the European age is over," as Johannes Lindner says in an interview with the Austrian daily Die Presse.
According to Lindner, both the war in Ukraine and the rivalry between China and the U.S. are motivations to review dependencies from a resilience and competitiveness perspective and, where needed, create incentives to locate Europe's own production in the internal market.
In view of the fact that countries like the U.S. are already intervening massively with the Inflation Reduction Act, Lindner believes that the EU cannot remain inactive. However, national governments should not aim to do this single-handedly: "If, for example, Germany were to rush ahead without taking others into consideration, the price of fragmenting the single market would be very high," Lindner emphasises.
Read the full article (in German) here.