Has the EU become protectionist? Why the cases of Talgo and Naturgy in Spain are a warning of what is to come

Has the EU become protectionist?  Why the cases of Talgo and Naturgy in Spain are a warning of what is to come

Brussels is already managed in a new period in which strategic autonomy requires sophisticated selections, nevertheless it is at the starting of a path with many obstacles and many questions. No, she has not become protectionist, however she has become cautious. In Spain there are two current examples that function a preseason for what is to come: Naturgy and Talgo, which add to what occurred a few months in the past with Telefónica. But we go in components. In the case of the power firm, thought of strategic by the Government, there is an curiosity on the half of the Emirati group Taqa to become a shareholder, one thing that if it occurs broadly may imply a sort of absorption of the entity. If we discuss the railway firm, The key is in the takeover bid that the Hungarian Magyar needs to launch, that though it is from one other EU Member State, it additionally poses a threat to Spanish autonomy. The Executive hopes for “some various.”

Spain skilled one thing comparable final September when the acquisition by of STC Group, the fundamental Saudi operator, of a 9.9% stake in Telefónica for a whole quantity of 2,100 million euros. This made the group the fundamental shareholder at one level, nevertheless it then assured that it didn’t need to take management of the entity; This compelled the State to transfer to take part as a majority in the firm, with a course of that has not but been accomplished.

And the telecommunications sector is particularly harmful, not just for Spain, but additionally for the EU as a complete. “Telecommunications infrastructure They are a elementary factor for the strategic autonomy of the EUhowever a number of obstacles have been rising that make it troublesome to meet the goals of the Digital Decade,” clarify Raquel Jorge Ricart and Judith Arnal in a report from the Elcano Royal Institute. Added to this is the indisputable fact that inventory market costs have been declining , subsequently opening the door to overseas investments.


The Arab group E& confirmed in July talks to totally enter the European markets via a collaboration with PPF Group, primarily based in the Czech Republic. PPF Group consolidated its place in the European telecommunications market with the acquisition of Telenor’s belongings in Hungary, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia (these final two candidate nations for EU accession) for €2.8 billion in March 2018, after having beforehand acquired O2 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Furthermore, as half of its development technique, STC has made a sequence of investments in the info, communication and know-how sector, each in Saudi Arabia and overseas, the most up-to-date being the acquisition by its subsidiary Tawal of the United Group’s telecom tower belongings in Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia.

In Brussels they have already got a thousand eyes on these actions. All these are just a few examples that put the neighborhood bloc on discover: occasions of nice industrial competitiveness are coming, and evidently the Union is already making ready. For instance, in August the Community Executive launched a new mechanism: the matching help. Through it, the European Commission licensed Germany to give 902 million to the Swedish battery producer Northvolt in order that it might not go to the United States, since she had additionally acquired an ‘supply’ to profit from the IRA, the American normal to appeal to investments. “We are not speaking about protectionism, however about autonomy,” emphasize neighborhood sources consulted by 20 minutes. “We have to find a way to make our personal selections.”

Germany made this notification inside the Crisis and Transition Temporary Framework, ready for these conditions, as the Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, and the German Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, defined at a press convention in Brussels. In this sense, The Northvolt plant may have an annual capability of 60 GWh. This interprets to between 800,000 and 1 million electrical automobiles per yr, relying on battery measurement. The manufacturing facility will begin manufacturing in 2026 and will attain full manufacturing capability in 2029.

“I feel we’ve got a very clear imaginative and prescient in Spain concerning the want to shield our strategic pursuits and we even have the vital regulatory devices,” defined the Spanish Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, this week. That identical strategic imaginative and prescient is what the EU as a complete needs to have, for whom the business has become a elementary concern for the medium and long run. The finest instance of this is what is now often called the ‘Letta report’, ready by the former Italian prime minister and centered on the competitiveness of the Union and the single market.

I feel we’ve got a very clear imaginative and prescient in Spain concerning the want to shield our strategic pursuits

The most vital conclusion of the doc is that the Union It has to promote the frequent business to “keep away from a decline” in world competitors towards the United States and China. This fall in the relevance of the EU “is not irreversible,” says Letta, who additionally calls on member nations to reinforce joint funding and scale back forms, with fashions comparable to these for the frequent buy of vaccines towards covid, the fund of restoration, the acquisition of power or the method comparable to that now being proposed for spending on army materials. This imaginative and prescient “amongst all” would assist, the textual content says, to scale back “the asymmetries between the EU territories.”

Enrico Letta needs to “full the single market” in the brief and medium time period, as a result of as he defined that the single market “is the coronary heart of European integration, and at the identical time it is much less full than many individuals assume.” In this sense, the doc advocates placing apart “nationwide pursuits in order that joint motion” by the Member States is totally accepted. It is additionally a name for “innovation” in the options that are proposed, with European public investments and a better weight of Projects of Important European Interest (IPCEI, for its acronym in English). Such a state of affairs would put the EU in a constructive state of affairs to face the arrival of exterior investments, particularly from the US and China and in strategic areas.


Spring Eurobarometer.

Likewise, it warns in the report that yearly There is a flight of some 300,000 million euros of financial savings from European households to overseas markets. To put a cease to this kind of state of affairs, the doc requires the creation of a Savings and Investment Union, that does develop from the Capital Markets Union, which is nonetheless incomplete. The key to the future of the EU lies, above all, in investments in components that enable for stronger, firmer growth, main to a neighborhood bloc that is “higher ready” for the challenges of the future. It’s time to compete.

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