In the spring, former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta released a lengthy report with proposals on how to strengthen and expand the EU’s single market – a report that was also debated in the European Parliament this week.
– We must act now. Inertia or inaction on this front risks reducing our choices to a single question: whether we want to become a colony of the United States or of China in ten years’ time, warned the socialist politician.
Today, the EU’s single market focuses on the “four freedoms” – free movement of goods, services, people and capital – and Letta wants the freedoms of research, knowledge, innovation and education to be added to this list, as well as more joint efforts in energy, telecoms and finance.
Several MEPs argued that Europe’s prosperity and competitiveness must be deepened and strengthened, and that less bureaucracy and less complicated regulations are needed for companies operating in the EU.
According to the report, EU countries have a total of around €33 trillion in savings, and around €300 billion of EU citizens’ savings are invested each year in the US economy – money that could have benefited European prosperity.
Want to create a “savings and investment union”
Several MEPs also argued that the EU’s capital market is dysfunctional compared to the US, and that it is currently much easier for companies in the US to find financing models, which needs to change.
– 300 billion euros flow to the USA every year. That is almost twice as much as the EU budget. It is capital that we have to invest and therefore the capital market union is of crucial importance, said Belgian Christian Democrat Wouter Beke.
Letta advocates using this €300 billion instead in a new European “savings and investment union” – a proposal also backed by the heavily criticized European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Belgian national conservative MEP Johan Van Overtveldt also criticized the border controls implemented by countries like Sweden and Germany, claiming they pose a threat to free movement within the Union.
– [This] inevitably risks the free movement of goods and services. To avoid ending up on a slippery slope in matters as important as the single market, we must therefore also work for an effective asylum and migration policy, he declared.