European industrial future: vital steps

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In order to strengthen industrial businesses in the member states, according to the Commission President, the EU needs the following priorities: speed, scale, power and new markets to compete in the world. As to speed – to expand production and grow, scale – to mobilise more investment and attract capital, as to power – to acquire abundant and affordable energy, and as to new markets – to strengthen and de-risk supply chains. The Commission President underlined these priorities at the recent EU industrial summit. 

Background
In the beginning of February 2024, the European industry leaders and policymakers met in Antwerp for the European Industry Summit to discuss the future of Europe’s industrial competitiveness, resilience and sustainability. The Summit comes at a crucial moment as the EU seeks to reconcile ambitious climate objectives with the need for growth, investment and quality jobs.
The event is important for the inauguration of the Antwerp Declaration, a joint appeal from European industry circles calling for competitiveness to be placed at the core of EU policy-making. The Declaration, which was also co-signed by FIEC in 2024, highlighting the need for a clear and coherent industrial strategy, simpler regulation, affordable energy, investment certainty and a level playing field for European companies.
On Declaration in: https://www.fiec.eu/news/news-2024/antwerpen-declaration-co-signed-fiecs-support
The Summit is highly relevant, specifically, for the construction sector, as its outcomes will influence the conditions for investment, skills development and the delivery of European green transition and infrastructure priorities.
More in: https://antwerp-declaration.eu/

In recent years, major industrial players such as BASF, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies and Envalior have had to scale back their activities. At the same time, strategic investments have been withdrawn, such as that of Vioneo. These are not isolated cases, notes press release, but clear warning signals that the European investment climate for industry is structurally deteriorating.
High energy and carbon costs, lengthy and uncertain permitting procedures, and an uneven playing field compared to imports from regions with lower standards are putting even innovative and clean projects under pressure. As a result, Europe is already losing industry, jobs and momentum in the climate transition.
Bottom-line: without a strong industrial base, there can be no strategic autonomy, no strong and resilient Europe, no sustainable prosperity and no successful climate transition.
Source: https://newsroom.portofantwerpbruges.com/en/press-releases/port-of-antwerp-bruges-heart-of-european-industry-calls-for-decisive-action-at-european-industry-summit

Present situation
The Commission President has formulated in February 2026 the EU-wide “joint plan” (which included a core element – the Clean Industrial Deal) to involve the decarbonisation and competitiveness. The good news is: the EU more than doubled investments in industrial transitions – from € 52 billion in 2024 to € 115 billion in 2025; besides, the Commission has already made proposals to cut administrative costs for companies by € 15 billion every year. The EU has launched a €1.8 billion Battery Booster, to scale up European battery manufacturing, and the EU concluded new trade deals and approved 60 new projects for critical raw materials to ensure secure supply for European industry. Thus, the EU’s industrial system is changing but it has to speed up further.
The EU remains a frontrunner in many areas of the clean transition: e.g. world-class value chains in clean energy, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing have been built. But competition is intensifying (sometimes an unfair competition) with massive subsidies, state-backed overcapacity and market distortions. This makes it increasingly difficult for European industry to compete on a level playing field, underlined the President. China now exports almost twice as much clean as the EU, which is not just a trade statistic, it is a signal of where industrial capacity is concentrating and of how quickly global market positions can shift. So, the EU has to “fight for its place in the new global economy”!
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/da/speech_26_382

Wanted: speed, scale, power and new markets
= Speed and new markets: in 2025 the EU concluded trade agreements with Mexico, Indonesia (with 280 million people) and Switzerland. In 2026, the Commission signed trade agreement with Mercosur, a market of 750 million people – a breakthrough after 25 years of negotiations. About 20% of Union’s GDP is covered with this free trade agreements; at the end of January the EU concluded a deal with India, the largest ever EU free-trade agreement with the market of 2 billion people and 25% of global GDP. The deal grants Europe a unique access to the fastest-growing large economy – a clear ‘first-mover’ advantage for the EU-wide businesses. These deals will open new export markets for European corporate community and secure supply of critical minerals.
= Activating investments. It is known that presently, it can take longer to conclude permit for a new factory than to build it; the energy projects can wait years for approvals, even when financing is ready. “This must change, and we have started to change it”, said the President.
For instance, the EU’s Wind Package is cutting permitting times by two-thirds; the grid connections are made faster, addressing a critical bottleneck for tacit approval of permitting.
The Commission has €set the target to cut red tape in this mandate by € 37 billion, that is 25% on the European level. Ten omnibuses are on their way; they are worth € 15 billion of cuts of red tape every year. Of the ten proposed omnibuses in 2025, only three have reached the final destination; for other seven omnibuses “same sense of urgency” from the European Parliament and the member states is needed, she added.
It is vital in investment a better access to low-cost capital: the structural solution is to build a deep and liquid capital market, i.e. new sectoral sub-union on savings and investment (SIU) reflects the Commission’s recent proposal. The SIU’s completion (Savings and Investment Union) can unleash up to € 470 billion of investment. But as global competition intensifies, investments are also vital to catalyse private money: in 2025, the Commission made a promise to change the State Aid rules for industrial sectors to make the process faster and more predictable. In the response to the new State Aid rules, the member states have already mobilised more over € 21 billion in State Aid to clean industrial projects.
= the European Single Market, the EU’s greatest economic asset. Barriers inside European states hurts more than tariffs from outside: therefore, it is necessary to complete the Single Market if Europe wants to stay competitive in a “world of giant companies”. That is why the Commission will propose the so-called “28th regime”: which means creating a new EU-wide corporate structure (often called “the EU Inc.”), as a company structure that will have a single and simple set of rules that will apply seamlessly all over the EU-27 states; therefore the 28th regime means that business can operate across member states much more easily. And entrepreneurs will be able to register a company in any member state within 48 hours, fully online. EU Inc. will ease access to finance in the start-up and scale-up phases, enable smooth cross-border operations and allow rapid wind-down if a company fails. “This is the speed we need, and this is ‘Europe made easy’, she noted.
= Creating lead markets, with the public procurement as a powerful lever: the latter already amounts to 14% of the EU’s GDP. This is massive financial firepower – controlled by the member state’s governments; though too often, the public entities acquire subsidized foreign products, instead of the high-quality European alternatives. This is the central point of the Industrial Accelerator Act that was revealed in January 2025; besides, the Commission will introduce specific EU-wide requirements for strategic sectors, including low-carbon requirements in public procurement. It will be based on rigorous economic analysis, will create a stable demand for industries and it will kick-off a virtuous cycle of growth; finally, the aim is to gain direct more European money to the European industries.
= Reliable and affordable energy, as a central point in making the “business case” in Europe, especially for the energy-intensive sectors. Prices are still too high and too volatile: the reason is that gas prices drive energy prices up, renewables and nuclear drive prices down. The gas price in 2025 in Europe was, on average, € 100 per MWh. The price for renewables was, on average, € 34 per MWh. And the price for nuclear was between € 50 and € 60 per MWh.
Of course, this is an average, so in different member states the situation varies: so, the good news is that the EU intends to lower costs. In 2025, for the first time ever, the EU-27 produced more electricity from solar and wind than from all fossil fuels together.
E.g. the battery storage capacity has more than doubled in the past two years: in the past two years, nuclear as still the largest single energy source, increased. But more is needed to stabilise and lower the prices, so the next few years are crucial.
The International Energy Agency predicts that gas prices are going down and are expected to stay down also in the next three-four years. The member states should use this time to invest in a low-carbon energy system, that will protect national economies when fossil fuel prices go up again: i.e. the process is a matter of time, and the prices will go up again. Thus, the states need feasible infrastructure for a true “energy Union”, because price spikes in one country could often be avoided if cheaper energy could flow across the borders. And the Commission has had a blueprint to address this, the so-called European Grids Package. As part of it, the Commission is fast-tracking the construction of Energy Highways across all European states.

     Note: just an example. The Commission started in early 2026 with an agreement on the Bornholm Energy Island in Denmark to connect offshore wind from the Baltic Sea to the Danish and German national grids. The idea is to transform the Baltic wind from a national resource into the “shared European power”. The goal is simple: clean energy must flow freely all across the Union’s member states so that cheap energy can flow where it is needed and when it is needed.

Additionally, the EU and the states must drastically modernise the energy taxation: while energy costs are going down, national taxes on energy are going up. And the taxes that industry pays on electricity are 15 times higher than taxes on gas. This is just wrong, underlined the EU authorities; they will go on working with the national governments to reduce the tax burden and bring prices down.
Finally, the EU institutions intend making greater use of power-purchase agreements and contracts “to make a difference” both for all the member states and the corporate sectors. As the rule of reason goes – locking in energy prices can protect from volatility and facilitate corporate planning for the long-term.