Opening remarks by President von der Leyen at the joint press conference with President Michel following the meeting of the special European Council of 18 April 2024

Opening remarks by the President: special EUCO 18 April 2024

The past four years have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the importance of strengthening our competitiveness and our Single Market. And let me give you three obvious examples. It is True for our ability to develop and deploy at scale the technologies we need for the twin transition. It is also indispensable if we want to have world-class players in the digital field and not simply be consumers of digital products or services produced somewhere else. And finally, the shockwaves of Russia's invasion of Ukraine have shown us how crucial it is to have a competitive and robust European defence industry.

So I am very grateful for Enrico Letta's excellent Report and presentation today. All this feeds into our reflection on priorities of action. I see four major areas for action. The first is indeed access to capital. The economic case for a Capital Markets Union is crystal clear, we do not have to repeat it here. Professor Letta mentions that every year EUR 300 billion of European savings are diverted abroad, mainly to the United States. That is money missing for the development of our companies in the European Union. And it is due to the fragmentation of our capital markets and finance system. And it was very clear that, when Christine Lagarde, last time she was here at the Euro Summit, said very clearly that companies in the European Union could raise an additional round of about EUR 470 billion a year in funding from the capital markets if we completed the Capital Markets Union.

So we need to take a series of decisive steps, and this has been discussed today. First, indeed, to lower the costs for companies for capital markets and investors. Second, to strengthen and align supervision of the most important players. And third, give predictability to investors on topics like insolvencies. And the conclusions of today are a strong push by the Leaders to move forwards on these and of course more topics that are written down there. Because we need to be focused on a simple European framework that adds value, lowers cost and improves the access to capital for businesses in all regions.

The second priority discussed is reducing the cost of energy. Energy costs continue to affect our European competitiveness. Energy-intensive industries such as steel, glass, cement, chemicals or fertilisers are particularly affected. We have reached again the pre-war level of the energy costs, but it is still structurally too high. And data show now that a large wave of new LNG export projects is coming to the market from next year on. This is good news. These projects are going to increase the global supply of LNG by 50%. So, we are moving from a world of shortfalls of gas to the opposite, to a world where we could see soon an abundance of gas on the market. And giving the new importance of LNG in our energy mix in the European Union, this will bring significantly lower gas prices. And at the same time, this will give us the time we need to build up the new clean energy economy, and this clean energy economy will be largely home-grown. And as we know, renewable energies come at a much lower price. So structurally, we can really make a change that is necessary.

The third priority is to address the lack of skills that affects our economy. This is a severe issue. And this is why we made 2023 the Year of Skills. We all know that in our labour market the untapped potential is limited. And it is limited because we have an economy with historically high levels of employment. So we have to really look at every single person that can potentially join the labour market. We need to train as many of our young unemployed. We need to improve women's access to the labour market, and for our older workers as well. And of course, we need legal migration. Last year, we had 3.5 million migrants coming legally to the European Union and joining our labour forces, invited by the companies. This is three times higher than illegal migration. So the better we are with legal migration, the more consequent we can and we have to fight irregular migration and the smugglers and traffickers behind it.

In addition, we have taken many initiatives in the area of skills because we need, of course, not only the training but the upskilling and the reskilling of the workforce. EUR 65 billion in funding of the European Union has been provided to the Member States to invest in training, notably through NextGenerationEU and the ESF+. We will continue our efforts in this area with the social partners. That is why the La Hulpe Declaration, that we signed yesterday, is so relevant.

Finally, we all understand that we cannot be competitive without trade. 90% of global economic growth is expected to be generated outside the European Union in the coming years. And Europe is a trading continent, much more open than the United States for example, and delivering a significant share of our prosperity from the trade contacts that we do have. The European Union is second to none in negotiating trade deals. And I want to give you a few figures from CETA. It has allowed last year EUR 4.5 billion export of agri-food to Canada, which is 53% more than before CETA, so a real increase. And we have an agri-food surplus of EUR 1.6 billion with Canada. So we need to continue to work for an open and fair trade that provides our companies with opportunities. But we also need a global level playing field and to address the risks that we see associated with openness. We already counter such risk with our trade defence measures. We have taken over 170 trade defence measures which have protected over 500,000 jobs in the European Union.

Let me conclude by reminding everyone that, despite the challenges, we are starting from a strong base. Thanks to our united efforts, the European Union weathered the COVID-19 crisis better than any other region. And this was thanks to, of course, the general escape clause, but mostly to SURE the job programme, and to NextGenerationEU, the investment programme. Unemployment is at an all-time low, at less than 6%, last December. And employment is at an all-time high, 75% in 2023. Inflation is coming back to a level of almost 2%. So our task, collectively, is to consolidate this and transform it into sustainable and long-term growth.

Thank you.

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