European Council President Michel said at the 20th Brussels Economic Forum on September 8 that the EU needs to develop a new route for strategic economic autonomy after the epidemic and more independent of the global powers in Asia and the Americas in the production and processing of medicines.
Michel further said that European strategic autonomy is the primary goal of our generation and is in the common interest of the EU, and that the industrial strategy will promote greater economic independence and ensure that we have the necessary resources to achieve economic prosperity and protect the well-being of our citizens.
The EU's long-term budget will help Europe reposition its economy with a focus on green and digital transformation, while the EU Recovery Fund will accelerate the pace of transformation.
In early September, European officials said the EU planned to launch the European Industrial Raw Materials Union (ERMA) in mid-to-late September 2020 to establish a complete raw material supply chain in the EU and boost the EU's digital and green transformation.
European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said on September 3: "We cannot convert our dependence on fossil fuels into dependence on key raw materials. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our strategic supply chains, making the problem even more prominent. "The EU will first focus on rare earth and magnet raw materials that are critical to renewable energy, defense and space, and then expand to other raw materials.
Eu Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that the EU cannot rely solely on third countries, that supply needs to be more diversified, and that the EU's own rare earth extraction, processing, recycling, refining and separation capabilities need to be developed.
In addition to the EU level, major European countries have recently put forward similar views aimed at reducing dependence on a single country.
On August 31, under the leadership of the French Ministry of Economy, the French Public Investment Bank began to accept applications from enterprises for "strategic industrial return support" to encourage the return of production in five key industries to France. The government said the subsidies totaled about 1 billion euros and would look to France in 2030 to prepare for the long term.
French Finance Minister Le Maire also said on September 8 that we must reduce our dependence on certain major countries, especially certain products in China, and strengthen our sovereignty in strategic value chains such as automobiles, aerospace and pharmaceuticals.
The German Foreign Office launched indo-Pacific policy guidelines on September 1, aiming to diversify economic partners and avoid single dependency.
The German Foreign Office pointed out that more than half of the world's population lives in countries around the Indian and Pacific Oceans, which already account for nearly 40% of global GDP, and the Indo-Pacific region is becoming the key to shaping the international order in the 21st century. The economies of Europe and the Indo-Pacific are closely linked through global supply chains, and Germany must seek to diversify its economic partners and avoid a single dependency.
Gabriel Felbermeyr, director of the Institute for World Economic Research in Kiel, Germany, said there were different interests within Europe, but with the new guidelines, Germany was "in the driver's seat" and could unite Europe in a balanced and reasonable way.
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