Heads of state and government from the EU met at an informal retreat at Alden Biesen Castle in eastern Belgium on Thursday, replacing the full monthly leaders’ summit in Brussels. The talks focused on reviving and streamlining Europe’s economy and on ways to counter strategic threats from China, Russia and the US.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stressed areas of agreement on arrival, after media speculation over differences between the bloc’s two largest economies. “We want to speed up the European Union, we want to make it better, and we want to ensure that we have a competitive industry in Europe,” Merz said alongside Macron. “I believe we share this sense of urgency, that our Europe must take very clear action,” Macron added.
Paris and Berlin, however, set out different approaches to boosting competitiveness. Merz has pushed to remove red tape and regulations, cut business reporting requirements, lower trade barriers between EU countries and pursue more international free trade agreements. Macron has advocated issuing more pooled joint debt underwritten by the bloc — a proposal Germany opposes. “We have taken on European debt in exceptional situations — but those were exceptional situations,” Merz said.
France also opposed the recently agreed EU trade deal with four Latin American countries after protests by French farmers. Merz criticized the European Parliament’s last-minute delay to the deal’s implementation.
Both leaders indicated growing convergence on harmonizing capital markets across the EU. The European Commission recently proposed a savings and investment union to streamline national rules and boost cross-border investment.
Host Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever urged a focus on affordable energy for industry, noting European industrial power prices are more than double those in the US and China. “We are not competitive and we risk losing the petrochemical industry, the steel industry, metals, and of course, this is the base of all prosperity,” he said.
Several leaders expressed impatience with the pace of reform. “There’s so much talk and so little action, and this is a chance to reverse that trend,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis lamented: “Only words, conferences, no action.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen struck a more optimistic tone: “The pressure and the sense of urgency is enormous, and that can move mountains.”
On the eve of the retreat, industry representatives urged leaders to “move from diagnosis to delivery, and from plans to results, with a single objective: Save our industry. Not next year, not next week, but today,” in a joint statement.
Macron proposed a June deadline for concrete decisions, saying the EU should either reach consensus among all 27 member states or, where necessary, proceed with enhanced cooperation among fewer countries to move faster. “We need to act fast and we need concrete decisions by June,” he said.
Edited by: Darko Janjevic