The Future of EU Competitiveness

competitiveness

Growing to Foster the European Economic and Social Model 

In a multipolar world, the European Union must carve out its role and cannot afford to lag behind the United States and China 

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competitiveness
2025 - n° 197 14/04/2025

Direct public subsidies to Chinese BEV producers in the forms of grants and tax breaks are relatively small. The Commission motivates a large part of the countervailing duties (CVD) with the argument that entire markets in China are so distorted by industrial policies that the Chinese BEV producers do not face market prices for credit and batteries. A Policy Brief by Daniel Gros, and Weinian Hu 

Daniel Gros, Weinian Hu
competitiveness
2025 - n° 191 02/04/2025

The intrinsic contradictions of Trump’s strategy will strike the United States where it is most vulnerable: inflation and employment. In the ensuing moves of this chess game, it is vital to project both strength and flexibility. A commentary by Ignazio Angeloni

Ignazio Angeloni
competitiveness
2024 - n° 129 09/10/2024

Building on a previous analysis of the trends of convergence and divergence between peripheral and core EA-12 countries after the euro area sovereign debt crisis (Bordignon et al., 2023), this work investigates the long-term evolution of such differences in economic, institutional, and political outcomes, testing whether a pattern of convergence was finally resumed and comparing the effects of this crisis with those induced by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Massimo Bordignon
competitiveness
2024 - n° 126 30/09/2024
A credible low-cost path to decarbonize energy systems and transport, which together account for 60% of emissions, now exists. Unfortunately, political obstacles to the rapid adoption of these clean-energy solutions have emerged, owing to NIMBYism in advanced economies and tensions between the West and China.
Daniel Gros
competitiveness
2024 - n° 112 16/07/2024

A popular thesis in policy circles is that there is an “investment gap” that Europe needs to fill to face the great challenges of our times, such as the digital and green transitions. However, the notion of the “investment gap” used by policymakers is often vague and therefore it risks legitimate a wasteful allocation of public resources.

Daniel Gros, Philip-Leo Mengel, Giorgio Presidente
competitiveness
2024 - n° 87 22/05/2024

ASML has a global monopoly on EUV, the most advanced lithography technology that is on the Wassenaar Arrangement list of dual-use technologies and requires an export license. The Dutch government approved the export license of EUV-technology to China in 2018. The US government was not pleased and tried to press its ally to consider the security issues. 

Sanne van der Lugt
competitiveness
2024 - n° 76 15/04/2024

It is often assumed that Germany’s economic relations with China are so important that Berlin tends to take a softer stance on China-EU relations than its EU partners – or at least that this used to be the case until most recently. In particular, it is feared that German industry might be more vulnerable to disruptions of the supply of Chinese inputs than other European countries. However, this impression of a greater dependency of German industry and its supply chains from China is not borne out by the data.

Samina Sultan
competitiveness
2024 - n° 26 25/01/2024

A key factor that policy often overlooks is substitutability. Almost every raw material has substitutes. A combination of substitution and some stock piling would be sufficient to de-risk the supply of raw materials to a large extent.

Daniel Gros
competitiveness
2023 - n° 14 25/01/2024

L'Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), firmato dal Presidente degli Stati Uniti Joe Biden quasi un anno fa (agosto 2022), è il primo importante provvedimento per contrastare il cambiamento climatico che il parlamento degli Stati Uniti abbia mai approvato. La ragione principale di questo successo è che l’IRA non impone oneri all’industria USA ma garantisce molti sussidi.

Daniel Gros
competitiveness
2023 - n° 12 25/01/2024

A detailed analysis suggests that the handicap for European producers in the US market will be limited. This small negative effect is likely to be overwhelmed by the much-increased market, implying that the IRA leads to increased opportunities for exports of electric vehicles and renewable inputs to the US. Our calculations suggest that over time the US market for electric vehicles could increase by a factor of 4 and renewables installations should also increase by hundreds of percent. A commentary by Daniel Gros.

Daniel Gros