PRESS RELEASE
2 October 2014, Sopot
How to stimulate the European economy?
'Improving the business environment is crucial, so that the companies could develop
faster. It is also vital to reduce the number of legal barriers that hamper the operations
of small and medium enterprises,' emphasized the participants of How to stimulate the
European Economy? Agenda for the next five years, a discussion panel held during the
European Forum for New Ideas.
Discussions focused on the report on Europe's competitiveness, prepared by four business
organisations: Polish Confederation Lewiatan, Federation of German Industries, Association of
Turkish Industry and Business and Economiesuisse. The report will be presented to the European
Commission in November of this year.
Günter Verheugen, professor at the Viadrina University in Germany, stated that if Europe wants to
recover from the crisis and to reduce the unemployment, in particular among the young people, it
must have a competitive economy. At the moment, the political and legislative business
environment is not conducive to competitiveness. Therefore the most dynamically developing
countries are located outside of Europe, and the emerging economies in Asia and South America
are catching up with the European states. According to Günter Verheugen, the most important
thing is to improve business environment and to increase innovativeness of the European economy.
He stated that the biggest successes of the integration, that is the common market and the
eurozone, are more beneficial to some countries than to others. Unfortunately, history shows that
stronger economies, like Germany, always gain more than weaker economies. This continues to be
true despite the huge funds spent on the Cohesion Policy. Therefore Germany should, said Günter
Verheugen, pay more attention to the balance in the European Union and to reducing imbalances.
Samuel Rutz with Avenir Suisse also talked about Europe that is divided by competitiveness. The
south of Europe differ from the north of our continent. Samuel Rutz argued that many of these
problems cannot be solved nationally, as they require solutions at a higher level, in particular as the
eurozone countries have lost the ability to stimulate their own competitiveness using their FX rates.
Jarosław Andrzej Szczepek, President of the Management Board at Wielton S.A., added that
competitiveness could be increased by investing in research and development. Poland's spending
on R&D is too low, only approx. 7bn per year. Vocational education has been neglected. Without
rebuilding social capital, it will be difficult for us to compete on international markets. Lack of
cooperation between business and foreign universities will not help either.
Małgorzata Bonikowska, Managing Partner at THINKTANK, warned that today, Europe is the best
place in the world to live, but it might not be the case in the future. If Europeans, feeling satiated,
fail to get motivated, they will lose the competition with the hard-working societies of the emerging
economies. 'The greatest problem consist in that we do actually know how to increase
competitiveness of the European economy. But we are not able to start acting, we are afraid to
make decisions. I hope that the new EU's authorities will get down to work straight away. I believe
that reducing the number of legal barriers that hamper the operations of small and medium
enterprises will be the biggest challenge.’
Janusz Reiter, Chairman of the Board at the Centre for International Relations, was the moderator.
The following organizations were partners of the discussion panel: Polish Confederation Lewiatan,
Federation of German Industries (BDI), Association of Turkish Indutsry and Business (TÜSİAD),
Economiesuisse and THINKTANK.
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