EU ‘Obstacles’ Hobble Growth, European Industrialists Say

The European single market is akin to an obstacle course, which has put several companies as also-rans as the U.S. takes the lead, Financial Times writes.

Leading industrialists say there’s regulation that has been harmful for innovation and expansion.

“There are so many obstacles and barriers that are making it hard to grow,” said Carl Henric Svanberg, chair of the influential Brussels-based European Round Table for Industry, which brings together leaders of 60 of the continent’s biggest industrial and technology companies, FT writes.

According to Svanberg, the U.S. economy has been the stronger one between 2008 and 2018, with cumulative real growth in the U.S. close to 19 percent — as opposed to 11.4 percent in the EU including the U.K.

Svanberg said that “the price we pay” for not realizing that growth is huge.

The report says there’s currently a €750 billion post-COVID recovery fund which will go toward driving digital and green transitions in the EU.

Business leaders are thinking there might be a failure to fully gel with rules in digital services, capital markets and energy which has held back European companies.

The report says the region’s problems were likely worsened during the pandemic, where only 16 European companies, including four from the U.K. and Switzerland, got into the global top 100 in terms of market capitalization.

The EU also brought accusations against China to the World Trade Organization as of Feb. 18, accusing Beijing of stopping European tech firms from pursuing recourse in foreign courts to defend patents.

Read more: EU Brings Legal Fight to WTO Over China’s Alleged Patent Infringement

A European Commission official said this was “part of a global power grab by the Chinese government by legal means. It is a means to push Europe out.”

China’s Supreme People’s Court decided last August that Chinese courts can impose “anti-suit injunctions” which can stop a country from taking its case to court outside of China. And there have been tensions between the EU and China, with Brussels also alleging Beijing was “taking its frustrations out” on Lithuania, an EU member state, over Taiwan due to a dispute, reports say.