On Thursday, European leaders decamped to a château in the Belgian countryside for a full-day brainstorm on the continent's economy. The gathering, effectively a warm-up act for next month’s European Council summit, centered on a now familiar theme: reviving Europe's competitiveness in the face of mounting threats from Russia, China and the United States.
One could be forgiven for wondering why yet another high-level brainstorm was necessary. After all, a remedy for Europe’s flailing competitiveness was prescribed already in 2024, in a much-praised and relentlessly cited report by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Competitiveness, though, has proven an elusive term. Since the report's release, European leaders have burnt through countless hours fretting over what competitiveness actually demands: deregulation versus safeguards, industrial policy versus climate ambition, growth versus digital and labor protections.
More recently, a Franco-German rivalry over a European procurement clause threatened to bog down this week’s gathering, with German Chancellor Freidrich Merz resisting French President Emmanuel Macron’s “buy European” push.
So it was surprising to see Macron and Merz arrive together at the moated Alden Biesen castle. “We want to make this European Union faster, we want to make it better,” Merz told reporters standing next to Macron. “And above all, we want to ensure that we have a competitive industry in Europe.”
Familiar rhetoric, and often no more than that. But eight hours later, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President António Costa emerged to proclaim broad agreement for an ambitious slate of commitments, including revamped merger rules to nurture European champions, long-stalled completion of a capital markets union, a bloc-wide corporate legal framework under the so-called 28th Regime, measures aimed at lowering energy costs and European preference in strategic sectors like defense and clean tech.
Von der Leyen vowed to turn Thursday’s banner — “One Europe, One Market” — into something tangible by 2028, and to deliver a roadmap at the March Council meeting. “The pressure and the sense of urgency is enormous, and that can move mountains,” the Commission chief said.
Perhaps most consequentially, the meeting signalled readiness to confront a stubborn EU taboo: bypassing unanimity. Under “enhanced cooperation,” smaller groups of countries can advance key policies without the full buy-in of all member states — a mechanism long available but sparingly used.
Such flexibility might, indeed, be the only viable way the bloc can confront unprecedented challenges like defense and security, Ukraine funding and enlargement.
And yet, as the somewhat shady-sounding term suggests, enhanced cooperation carries risks. A two-speed Europe might expedite decisions and pressure reluctant capitals to fall in line. But it’s easy to imagine how unity by division becomes the norm, chipping away at the foundation of the European project as smaller countries get left behind.
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