Posted Oct 2, 2022, 4:46 PM
European industry is cracking. Our continent had promised to reindustrialize after the Covid crisis, which revealed excessive dependence on the rest of the world. In electronic chips, batteries, active ingredients for drugs and so on, it was time to reconquer. With the aim of regaining autonomy in a range of critical industries.
Draghi’s bitterness
But now the energy crisis threatens to sweep away these efforts and ruin whole sections of our industry. Germany, the industrial heart of the continent, is so aware of this that it has just urgently announced a titanic plan of 200 billion euros, or 5% of its national wealth, to compensate for soaring energy costs. . It will be said that it is paying the price for a short-sighted policy – submission to Russia for gas, disorderly exit from nuclear power – but it has the means and can thus hope to save its Mittelstand. Italy, which does not have such room for maneuver any more than we do, fears, as Mario Draghi bitterly said, that this massive German aid will create “dangerous and unjustified distortions” between European countries – a concern shared by the Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
Putin’s Dream
The concern is all the more acute as the rise in interest rates accentuates the divergences between a Germany which can take on unlimited debt at 2% and southern European countries such as Italy which are already financing themselves more than 4.5%. Putin’s dream of a dividing Europe has perhaps never been closer to being realized! Let’s avoid it.
Because he is not alone in dreaming of undermining what this continent has taken decades to build. If energy prices are soaring in Europe, this is not the case in China or the United States. In the steel industry, chemicals, glass, building materials among others, we find there the production lost here, where factories are shut down. China was competitive, it is even more so. Xi Jinping’s dream of sucking up a share of Europe’s industrial production is coming to fruition fast. And what about Joe Biden? Adopted this summer, the Inflation Reduction Act, with its budget of 370 billion dollars, offers a red carpet to industrialists, especially Europeans, ready to invest on American soil. Beyond the energy war, it is indeed a battle to save our industry that is being played out. It is up to us to remain united and to prove wrong all those who dream of ousting us. In this battle, we have no allies.
What benchmarks in a constantly changing world?
Political uncertainties, scientific innovations, war in Ukraine, energy and ecological transition… How to understand these changes? How to position yourself? Every day, the 200 journalists from the “Echos” editorial staff help you decipher economic, political and international news through surveys, analyses, press reviews, chronicles and editorials. Our subscribers know that they can rely on these resources to better navigate our complex environment and make the best strategic decisions.
