Industrial policy emerges as key battleground for the EU’s economic MEPs

A new crop of European Parliament lawmakers tasked with dealing with economic affairs will focus on industrial policy, though some fear a free-for-all of state support, key MEPs have told Euronews.

The European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, ECON, met for the first time today (23 July) since June elections, with new leadership and a sharpened political focus.  

“The last mandate was centred on environmental and geopolitical questions,” committee chair Aurore Lalucq (France/Socialists and Democrats) told Euronews, citing the fight against climate change and war in Ukraine. 

Now, it needs to look at more direct economic support, said Lalucq, in an interview given directly after she was appointed to lead ECON’s work monitoring financial services laws, competition policy and the work of the European Central Bank.  

After the regulatory focus of the Green Deal, “now we have to pass to step two: industry, industry, industry”, she said, adding that Brussels needs to build what she – and others – have dubbed “European strategic autonomy”.  

“It means the EU seeing itself not just as a single market, but as an economic power,” she said. “There is a difference.” 

Though the EU has tough rules to combat state subsidies, and to block corporate mergers  that could harm competition, those powers belong to antitrust officials at the European Commission rather than lawmakers at the Parliament.  

Now Lalucq, seeing Europe squeezed by protectionist policies in the US and China, is hoping to exert some leverage. 

“My role as president of ECON isn’t just to take sides, but to ensure we can have a certain number of debates,” she told Euronews. “There are many debates that we no longer have at European level, but that we absolutely must have, calmly.” 

Easier mergers?  

Lawmakers voted for von der Leyen to serve a second term after she promised a new competition policy that accounts for “innovation and resilience” in assessing corporate mergers. 

That responds to a demand from the likes of France that the EU needs to allow the construction of global-scale European champions. 

In the autumn, Lalucq’s committee will get to probe that pledge further, when its members grill von der Leyen’s pick to be competition commissioner. 

Over the next five years, lawmakers can also consider legislation to build up the bloc’s capital markets – which, some argue, could provide the finance needed for investment. 

But, even within Lalucq’s own committee, there is opposition to having too much flexibility on subsidies which some view as expensive and distortive. 

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Asked by Euronews to set out his plans for the mandate, German lawmaker Damian Boeselager said it was that “competition and state aid rules are not undermined”. 

Boeselager, from the pan-European Volt party which sits in the Parliament’s Green grouping, said he hoped ECON – to which he was elected as first vice-chair in a 38-8 vote – would “stay true to its origins” in defending EU laws. 

“Some Member States are saying competition comes from giving money to large business,” he told Euronews. “You can’t just have any kind of mergers or state aid.” 

Un-botching Brexit

Lalucq’s policy of seeking greater European independence also seems to apply to financial services – even though she hopes for better relations with London, the powerhouse across the Channel.  

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“If we have better relations with a government that seems to me to be totally serious, open, which isn’t populist – I would be absolutely delighted,” she said, of Keir Starmer’s new left-wing administration that has promised to fix a Brexit deal it describes as “botched”.  

But, when it comes to detailed policy, Lalucq is cautious about continuing to allow EU banks to continuing access London-based financial infrastructure such as clearinghouse LCH.

“I am totally in favour of repatriation of clearinghouses onto European soil,” she said. “I fought for it last mandate, but I was blocked by France.”