At a time when attempts to destabilize Europe are stepping up, when an American business leader is interfering in the German legislative election campaign in support of a far-right party (after making a Nazi salute), and when the dramatic consequences of the environmental crisis have never been so well documented – "Extreme heat will kill millions of people in Europe without rapid action," asserted the journal Nature – Commission president Ursula von der Leyen delivered a speech on January 29 that didn't seem commensurate with what is at stake.
Presented as an "EU Competitiveness Compass," and intended to set the course for the next five years, this program offered as its flagship project ... "a simplification shock," thereby yielding not only to the increasingly insistent demands of employers' organizations, but also to the trend (re)launched in spectacular style by the presidents of Argentina, Javier Milei, and the United States, Donald Trump: deregulate, reduce controls, cut public spending, put the State under market surveillance and give all power to companies and their shareholders.
In this shock, the main elements that made Europe the leader in environmental and social transition will be swept away: the obligation for companies to report on how they treat their employees, stakeholders and the environment (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, CSRD), and how they take human rights into account throughout their value chain (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, CSDDD). Indeed, although von der Leyen denies any desire to call European climate targets into question, they are clearly no longer a priority. For this to be the case, a concrete plan listing investments to be made and the means to finance them would be required, as the Draghi report had suggested.
There is also no mention of how this competitiveness program will simultaneously support efforts in innovation – which seem to have been reduced to artificial intelligence (AI), another fad? – and decarbonization, nor how the contradictions that make the two projects incompatible will be resolved.
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