Additional considerations on the Euro area economic policy 2025

Key points

The EESC:

• notes that the economic performance of the EU and euro area countries, particularly over the last five years, has not enabled the EU to maintain its strong position in the global economy, primarily in comparison with the US and Chinese economies;
• points out that in addition to the low growth rate, the economies of the EU and the euro area struggled with high inflation, which went hand in hand with relatively inadequate structural resilience to current security risks;
• is pleased that the EU and euro area economies have achieved a positive trade balance overall, and strongly recommends that all necessary measures be taken in economic and trade policy with a view to keeping up this positive trade balance and current account surplus;
• recommends focusing on strategically important industries and creating the administrative and financial conditions for strong investment;
• supports the European Commission’s work on the Single Market Strategy, and considers that there is room for more effective financing thanks to the savings and investments union and a bigger, integrated capital market;
• believes that a targeted policy must be adopted and rolled out which will support the entry of successful and ambitious companies into the global market, and points out that sufficient scope must be ensured for highly skilled people in technological and innovative workplaces in Europe as well as in the ongoing Choose Europe initiative;
• welcomes the ongoing efforts to simplify procedures and underlines that social and environmental protection standards must not be undermined;
• welcomes efforts to create fiscal space by means of a targeted revision of the EU fiscal rules and by implementing an EU investment capacity to finance growth-enhancing investments that are of strategic interest for the Single Market;
• recommends that the European Commission lose no time in signing bilateral trade agreements with all countries with the biggest external trade turnover and continue working to renew multilateralism and initiating urgent reforms in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Practical information

The EU Youth Test at the EESC was applied to this opinion. Human Development Research Initiative (HDRI) was chosen by a group of interested youth organisations to represent all of them during the opinion-making process.