Luxembourg is gearing up for a high-profile back-to-school economic event. On 16 September, the Chamber of Commerce will host the first edition of its forum "It's the economy, stupid!", a day of debates devoted to the major challenges shaping our collective future. The title was coined by James Carville, then advisor to Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992.
One question will serve as a common thread: "What is the cost of inaction?". Through this question, the aim will be to assess what standing still could cost us in the face of the three major transitions of our time: the demographic transition, the energy transition and the technological transition.
To shed light on these issues, three leading figures will share their vision and experience: economist Maxime Sbaihi, President of the European Climate Foundation Laurence Tubiana, and former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, now head of the Institut Jacques Delors.
We spoke to Enrico Letta just a few days before his speech in Luxembourg. We spoke to him about his remarkable report for the European Commission, Europe's competitiveness in the face of the United States and China, and the concrete reforms that could change the situation in the months ahead.
There's a lot of talk about the various reports that leading political figures like yourself publish. But do you think they are sufficiently followed up by concrete action?
"What is happening shows that the integration of the European single market is the key to a more competitive Europe. Up until now, Europe has been very defensive. We've had to stay on the defensive with Russia, with Putin, with the tariffs and with Trump. Now we have to go on the offensive. And going on the offensive means working to ensure that the integration of the internal market gives us greater competitive strength. That's the most important point.
For an average citizen who still sees the European machine as a very slow bureaucracy, very difficult to move, would you have two or three concrete examples to say: these are the things we should be doing with a deadline of say 3 months, 6 months or a year from now, we should have sorted out this particular issue. What are the urgent things?
The most important thing from my point of view is this idea that I put in the 28th regime report. [...] So a 28th regime that can, for SMEs, for start-ups, make things simpler and faster so that they can sell directly throughout the European Union. One of the proposals that is on the table and that the European Commission has taken from my report, for example.
And how long will it take to put this in place?
In 12 months, we can easily do it. A second avenue is linked to the energy market. The third is to eliminate the fragmented telecoms market. The other major issue is that of savings, how to ensure that we have European instruments that make savings more capable of being in major investments.
On the question of energy, we see many countries that are sometimes slow to share the energy they produce or have bought. In telecoms it's the same, there are many national champions and many countries are afraid that their champions will disappear in what you are proposing.
It's good that they are afraid! That's exactly the aim of my report. Clearly, we need to create European champions. The truth is that it's not Europe that's weak, it's the European Member States that are weak. Europe is divided into two groups of States: the small European States and the European States that have not yet understood that they are small.
Yes. But you come from a large country in the European Union. I, for example, work in a very small country in terms of population, GDP, whatever you like. So inevitably, the small ones are perhaps more afraid of losing something than the big ones. Isn't there a bias there?
Frankly, I've seen more resistance in the big countries than in the small countries....
On Trump, we were thinking that in a year we've never seen so many articles, so many announcements, so many subjects on the American president who seems to have a single strategy: deliberately occupy the media field, even if it means changing every day. The Europeans are saying: if this continues, we'll impose sanctions. But we don't see much of Mrs von der Leyen moving to the reality of what you called earlier a more offensive position by the Europeans.
I think it's necessary to do this by working on our integration. The fundamental thing is to create a European financial market, for example. The main problems we have are what I have tried to highlight in this report: our dependence and lack of autonomy on the major issues of energy, telecoms, the financial market and defence. If someone outside Europe disconnects us, we collapse in a minute. That's the real problem!
Can we really solve this problem when we talk about sovereignty? We're virtually incapable of producing electronic chips, the Chinese have 80% of the rare materials and the Americans have their hands on all the data. Do we not have years or impossible levels of effort ahead of us to turn things around?
Maybe, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't catch up. If we get the interconnections right, we can take advantage of this diversity. But to do that, we need a single market and technology.
How do you feel, for example, about the hundreds of thousands of cars arriving from China, with so many manufacturers that it foreshadows a major industrial disaster for the European automotive sector?
Great concern because we didn't see all this coming! I think we need to support transitions! With the Savings Investments Union, we can mobilise private savings for public goods.
I imagine that in view of your report and your various positions, you are an advocate of European bonds or a European financing product that would serve both the European Union and mobilise the billions of savings sitting in bank accounts.
Of course! Yes, that's one of the things we need to do.
Today, we can see both in discussions with Trump and those with the Russians and Ukrainians that the idea of Europe speaking with one voice is not working. Wouldn't this European obligation, or this method of European funding, have a political impact, in the sense that there could no longer be one truth in Brussels and another truth in each Member State?
What I find patent this summer is the lack of understanding on the part of European leaders of the fact that cacophony is suicide for everyone. And that's the problem. Whereas European leaders need to be able to speak with a voice that represents everyone.
Do we get the leaders we deserve?
The ones we elect anyway... The main point is that Trump is sounding a wake-up call. Personally, I sincerely hope that this wake-up call will help the leaders of the major countries to put an end to this fight between one country and another that is weakening our common adventure.
But it doesn't seem to be changing much....
Something is changing because, for example, on the issue of trade tariffs, in the end we all decided together and spoke with one voice. I'm absolutely in favour of an agreement like Mercosur: it's a way of saying "Look, it's not just the United States, we have to be ambitious."
