Fostering competitiveness, innovation and job creation should be a priority in global regulatory cooperation through a renewed multilateral trading scheme, says the European Economic and Social Committee in an opinion initiated by Georgi Stoev and Thomas Student and adopted by the EESC plenary in July.
Disruptions like coronavirus (COVID-19) threaten to bring the global economy and social life to a standstill. Its impacts include recessions in the USA, the EU, Japan and other regions of the world, extremely slow growth in China and huge losses in terms of output. Governments have to offset economic damage with fiscal and monetary policies and cope with the expected changes to the economic paradigm.
''Industrial development in Europe must not fall victim to unfair economic, social and environmental dumping. This could become a real threat to European industries and the European social model," said the rapporteur of the opinion, Georgi Stoev. ''We are concerned about the negativity regarding international trade and globalisation and the rise of populism. Protectionism and nationalism cannot provide answers to economic and social problems,'' he concluded.
"Europe urgently needs a new project for internal integration: a common economic, social (including public health coordination), fiscal, energy and environmental strategy and a coherent trade policy,'' said the co-rapporteur, Thomas Student. The EESC believes that the Green Deal should integrate a new industrial strategy and trade policy together with economic, regulatory and competition policy in a comprehensive effort to help the environment, without creating a threat to the single market and European companies and jobs, and should set high environmental targets for industry as a whole. (ks)