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Beijing’s intentions aren’t yet clear, according to Sander Tordoir, a senior economist at the Centre for European Reform.“The European Commission followed the World Trade Organization’s rules in designing the countervailing duties on Chinese electric vehicles,” Tordoir wrote in an email to VOA.

“The stakes are hard to overstate. If Scholz had succeeded in overturning the tariffs at the eleventh hour, it would have vindicated China’s efforts to lean on individual member-states and been the final nail in the coffin of EU efforts to have a foreign economic policy,” said Sander Tordoir of the Centre for European Reform.

The scale of the problems facing Europe, though, with Germany giving up hope of achieving any growth this year, mean a lot has to go right. If energy costs are a competitive disadvantage for industry, that’s a separate challenge to needing more R&D spending. Trade policy will also have to play a part in leveling the playing field for domestic industries, with an imminent decision due on China EV tariffs. All these will have to work alongside foreign policy in the race to secure raw materials, as the Centre for European Reform notes. 

Sander Tordoir, Chefökonom der renommierten Denkfabrik Centre for European Reform, sieht in Draghis Schrift etwas Historisches: Sie verbinde Pläne von Jean Monnet (Verteidigungsintegration) und Jacques Delors (Binnenmarkt) mit Bidenomics (Clean Tech plus Resilienz).

Reacting to the report, the Centre for European Reform questioned whether the bloc’s leaders will be willing to implement its findings.It wrote: “Draghi’s report represents a much-needed reality check for the EU’s ambitions. European leaders must address the lack of support for disruptive innovation in Europe and the difficulty entrepreneurs face in commercialising their ideas and scaling up.

“Europe’s innovative capacity is declining, compared with other major advanced economies, as is its business dynamism,” laid out a policy brief from the Centre for European Reform. “Intensifying state-led Chinese competition, geopolitical tensions and continued reliance on imported energy mean that policy procrastination could lead to permanent stagnation, or worse.”