Discours du Président Emmanuel Macron au troisième sommet industriel européen à Anvers.

Mesdames et Messieurs, merci beaucoup. Merci beaucoup, M. le Président, pour nous accueillir. Pas seulement comme le Président, mais dans le cœur de vos cœurs, si je peux dire. Et vous mentionnez Napoléon, et vous mentionnez aussi, et en France, nous savons que quand nous lançons l'état généraux, il pourrait être un bon signal, même si vous n'avez jamais vu comment il finir. Mais au final du jour, nous avons besoin de eux aujourd'hui. Je pense que je vais aller directement au point, parce que vous avez commencé votre travail avec le Président von der Leyen et vous avez eu beaucoup d'exchange avec nos commissaires, et le Président de l'Austria et le Président de l'Ontario ont déjà exprimé.

Nous savons presque beaucoup la situation en Europe. Et les rapports Draghi et les rapports de l'État ont, je pense, ont mis nos pensées communes juste après la pandémie. Et la nécessité, clairement, de travailler très hard sur notre compétitivité. Mais je dirais qu'en top de ça, nous avions une grande accélération de l'histoire. Et nous avons commencé à délivrer sur la base de l'Ontario et l'État de l'Ontario. À un moment, c'est trop lent, comme quelques personnes disent. Mais c'est clairement, la commission, et probablement le Président von der Leyen a expliqué à vous cette matinée, qu'elle a commencé à lancer une série d'initiatives omnibus avec le Président et le Commissaire.

Mais nous avons besoin du Parlement, et c'est encore trop lent, si vous référez à Draghi et l'État de l'État. Mais en plus de ça, nous avions une accélération de moins de trois facteurs. Un qui était déjà en train pour le report, l'énergie. Vous l'avez mentionné. Et en fait, la énergie russienne n'est pas arrêtée en 2022, et il n'y a pas de façon de revenir. Et c'est le premier point à être pris en considération. Et nous n'avons pas bien fixé cette issue jusqu'à ce moment. Deuxièmement, nous pensions que la Chine resterait un supermarché pour nous et pour nos expériences. Et cette situation est terminée.

2025 est le premier an, pendant laquelle la Néamie, qui était le principal exporter de l'eurozone et de l'économie européenne, a un déficit de trade avec la Chine. Ça n'a jamais eu lieu avant. Et c'est clair que pendant les deux dernières années, nous étions déroulés par les expériences chineses vers le marché européen. Et c'est un total revanche de notre histoire. Et le troisième point est que les États-Unis, notre alliés, est également énormément confrontational. Et le post-Draghi report, ce qui s'est passé ? Tarifs. Mais pas seulement tarifs. Une série de mécanismes économiques.

On a parlé de pharma, on a beaucoup d'autres topics, on Greenland, on the Board of Peace, a lot of threats, sector by sector. And of Russia as a permanent provider of low-cost energy. And of China as a main export market we had to make them our main competitors and especially for carmakers, especially for key sectors of our competitiveness. And third, having the U.S. now putting tarifs on our economy and coercion mechanism, this is a game changer. And this is why it's not just a transition. And none of this new factor will change on the short run. This is not a temporary shock. This is clearly a structural turning point. And we have several options.

The first one is to wait or to remain quite slow, to make incremental change and to do what we've done during the past decades. the consequence of this option would be slow decline. The second one is to try to compromise with those who are trying to kill our economy, what I call the happy vassalization. I'm not even sure it will be happy. Another one is a wake-up, but with a clear acceleration and we need a new scale and new speed in our approach. in order to stop with the fragmentation, the weakening and probably the humiliation of Europe. And this way forward, which is according to me the only one we could defend and advocate, is to make Europe an independent power.

Not just being a single market, but an economic power, meaning protecting our producer, defending our producer and deciding to protect as well our own markets and building our strategic independence. If you are upon to remain an industrial power, we must preserve your key sectors, obviously chemistry, which is the industry of the industry, but all the sectors you gathered in this room, in this booth. And because if we lose our capacity to produce critical molecules, these key elements of our economy, we will totally lose our capacity to have our own defense capabilities, our pharmaceutical supply, our agriculture, or to deliver our own green transition.

This is why I really consider that your own verb declaration in 2024 marked the turning point, but this is why I really believe we have to deliver a new agenda. And for me, this agenda is based on four pillars. The two first ones, I would say, are largely shared. Simplification and deepening of the single market, the first one. And clearly, this is all about implementation and speed. The second one is diversification of our trade partnerships and derisking, remaining necessary. The third one is protection and European preference. And the fourth one is massive investment and innovation.

And we need four of them if we want to be credible and deliver an holistic approach for our European industry. First simplification, what we need is a stronger single market. And sinking at scale, I would say. The single market at 450 million consumers must become Europe's primary instrument of power, resilience, and competitiveness. This requires a change of mindset from fragmentation to scale, from national reflexes to European ambition. So we have an agenda in order to deliver this improvement of the single market. And I don't want to be too detailed, but I just want to flag one or two sectors. And obviously, the first one is energy.

When we build a single market, we decided not to make a single market on energy, telco, and finance. I mean, for relevant reasons at the time. It was 40 years ago. But on energy, clearly today, this is a weakness. Energy is the backbone of European industry, and you mentioned the impact of the post-2022 situation. And let's be honest, Europe cannot defend ambitious climate objectives while allowing its industrial base to disappear. High energy prices, combined with carbon costs, are accelerating deindustrialization and not decarbonization. So we must therefore act on several fronts. First, energy prices.

We must deliver a genuine energy union capable of providing stable, predictable, and competitive energy to industry. This means massive investment in energy grids and interconnections, long-term contracts, and I would say, in fact, what we have to build, it's very simple. We have to build an integrated European grid to provide the free circulation of low-carbon electrons. What we have to offer to the industry is to have long-term contracts with full visibility with the pricing for low-carbon electrons. And sometimes, it will be low-carbon electrons provided by offshore wind close to here, solar energy in Spain or nuclear energy in France, depending on the moment of the year and your needs.

what we have to fix is the fragmentation of our markets by building this infrastructure and the single regulation and integration of our national grid and regulation. It also means recognizing that different member states have different energy mixes and the other points, and we started to fix it, but we lost a lot of time with that. We need technological neutrality. And until last year, we were incapable to have technological neutrality. and as long as we differentiated renewable, nuclear, and so on, it was a stupidity because what we need is to provide on our soil low-carbon pilotable energy. So tech neutrality, integration of our grids, and clearly integration of a common energy market.

in this regard, France has clear advantage due to our model and the existing model with the, I mean, the nuclear energy and so on. But we need the interconnections and we want to step up at the European scale. This is a very important answer. This is a structural one, but let's be honest, we have to accelerate and do our best, but it will not fix your situation in six months' time. The second approach is with CBAM. The carbon border adjustment mechanism is a necessary tool, but only if it works in practice. And when we make it, when we enforce it, it's a super important instrument because it's clearly what we advocated. It's a mirror clause.

I was yesterday with ArcelorMittal facility in Dunkerque. CBAM is the only way to prevent circumvention and not to create new vulnerabilities. And because we have CBAM for steel, they decided to invest in Europe. Without CBAM, it's over. No chance to preserve our steel industry without implementing CBAM. This requires robust default values, rapid identification of high-risk country product pairs and a swift extension to relevant downstream products, particularly in chemical value chains. So decarbonisation must become a driver of competitiveness, not a vector of industrial decline and it's extremely important.

And beyond CBAM, what we need, and it's the same if we take Rich as a regulation for the chemical industry, mirror clause. As long as we put additional regulation to our industries, we have to be sure that we reflect them and mirror them to the non-European industries. Also, why is we have to kill our regulation to our own players because it's just meaning that our over-regulation, our decarbonisation strategy is the killer for our industry. I want to insist on one point in this regard, predictability. And this is absolutely key for our industrial partners. You need stable and predictable regulation. Shall we look at the emissions trading system mechanism?

It must support decarbonisation in the long run, but without undermining competitiveness with predictability. Carbon leakage must be avoided at all costs. and for energy-intensive industries such as chemistry, uncertainty is as damaging as high prices. So providing visibility and predictability is key. On simplification, I said it many times, now Europe must deliver quickly and credibly. We have 10 omnibus packages. They have to be clearly implemented in the current year. and the stock of EU legislation must be reviewed to eliminate inconsistencies, redundancies and unnecessary burdens. Simplification to provide clarity, predictability and speed.

This is a key point I could revert but we will have Q&A on the 28th regime on what we have to do in the different sectors but it's the first pillar. The second pillar is trade diversification and derisking. Europe must continue to pursue balanced and mutual beneficial trade partnerships but trade policy must now become a strategic tool to reduce dependencies and vulnerabilities. This is particularly true for critical raw materials and strategic inputs. Despite dozens of trade and mineral agreements, Europe remains dangerously exposed. So we must move from agreements on paper to concrete projects on the ground.

This means supporting extraction, processing and refining capacity, investing in recycling and traceability and building strategic reserves including a European stockpile of critical materials. But in this diversification and derisking, rare earths and critical minerals are absolutely one of the key issues where we have to diversify our partnership, where we have to increase as well our circular solution but build a European capacity and try to negotiate and the G7 we will share this year will be a good framework to try to cooperate with other economies. I think about Canada particularly but clearly we have to derisking our economy on that.

The third pillar is about investment and innovation and I want to insist on that because on the short end it is absolutely necessary to accelerate in terms of investment on strategic technologies. On artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, space, defense, clean tech, biotech, chemistry, chips, etc. We are at the beginning of a big revolution where both China and the US privately and publicly are investing much more than we are doing. We are lagging behind let's be honest when you look at the figures. It was very clear in Draghi reports and on top of that you could clearly add defense and security as a series of key sectors where there is a big acceleration of investment.

Europe must be a technological maker and not just a regulator which will require both private and public investment. This is why the next EU budget from 28 to 2034 must significantly strengthen Europe's financial firepower. It will be our discussion this year but this is why we have to activate much more private money. In terms of saving we are number one number one in the world. Europe savings amount to nearly 30 trillion euros. but this is over invested in the bond market under invested on equity and innovation and every year around 300 billion flow from Europe to finance the American economy are leaving our continent. So what we have to do in order to do so?

First, we have to deliver the securitization program proposed by the commission. we need a big acceleration. This is the only way to take the money from the balance sheet of banks and insurance which I want here just to remind you it's 75% of the financing of our economy. We have to take with the securitization program a big amount of money to rechannel it to the financing of equity and innovation. Second, acceleration of the capital market union. It's a game changer and we have to accelerate this year and for me 26 is the year where we have to finalize all the text. If we do the same as what we did with the banking union we have no chance to be credible.

It took us 10 years not even to finish the job. 26 we have to finalize the job and at the middle of this year if we don't progress don't progress we should consider to do it with a few member states and clearly to have enhanced cooperation if we are unable to deliver at 27. But on top of that we have to invest much more public money. Our budget obviously but this is why I propose to make Eurobon for the future. Why? Because nobody wants to put more money from the national scale to increase the European budget. There is no room to increase the European budget with additional taxes. And if I say we will increase the ETS1 or ETS2 I don't think I will be consistent with my former points.

So it's not a good room to manover. We have no space. So the only way to increase the common budget is to make common assurance on the market. And guess what? We are under leverage at the aggregated level. Kristalina Georgieva came and pitched in front of the European Commission. If you look both China and the US they have much more leverage than the Europeans. We have to fix our own national situation in terms of public finance because it's how to deal with our social model. This is a national issue. But at the European level we have to invest for our future and for our industry.

If we want to have the right level of investment on space, defense and security, clean tech, AI and quantum and to transform the productivity and competitiveness the only way is to have common issuance of debt because we are under leverage and because there is a clear demand on the market for new paper. All the big pockets of this world want to diversify their portfolio from the dollar and they are looking for safe and liquid assets and a common euro debt is a very good a very safe but not a sufficiently a sufficiently liquid asset today. So we have to remember progressively the several issues we made in the past few years.

ESM, safe programs, what we did during the COVID time with the first emission. So we need the European Treasury to have just one common basket for this emission and more debts and more consistency but we have clearly the ability to issue common debt to finance this common investment. It's not financing the past mistakes but it's financing our future. Why? Because if we are not able to be in the race with the US and China in the coming five years we have no chance to deliver our agenda. My last point is about protection and European preference and I know that when a French guy says protection some people want to hear protectionism. No.

I mean it's not my political DNA I don't believe in protectionism but I don't believe in such a naive continent where we are the only one in this world not to protect the local producers. go to China no chance one of you has even I mean the equal opportunities with a Chinese player. Go to the US on the North American market no chance that none of you has the same chance as a local producer. they have local preference they have local content being secured in a lot of sectors sometimes they even impose you to have a local partner in your GVs.

Look at Europe so many times we invest and finance non-European solutions we are crazy literally so we started to react and this is why when the commission started these inquiries on Europe on EVs it was normal it was just restoring level playing field it was not a protectionist approach it was just to say it's clear that some of these EV producers are over subsidized it was not a tariff across the board but just to say we will restore level playing field it worked look at the figures it decrees right after because it was unfair but it's not sufficient we started to do some protections with this clearly this first action of the commissions with these inquiries on EVs with the self-guarde clause on steel with the recent guidelines on the automotive sector but we have a big issue today we are too slow a lot of you probably ask for inquiries in order to trigger self-guarde but it takes sometimes 18 months to 24 months to the commission I mean sufficient for you your challenger to kill you I mean you know that on a daily basis when you have a Chinese challenger based on other subsidies making price at 20-30% under your price if two years later the commission say you were right but you are dead I mean thank you God I'm happy I was we're right it's over so we have to accelerate and need much more swiftly process for these inquiries clearly but I think we have to to go further we need this European preference we have to secure on strategic sectors a minimum percentage of European content in order to protect the systemic value chain based approach this is the only way not to be reactive I was yesterday in Dunkerque with Arcelor I mentioned it we saved them with safeguard laws we took a lot of measures thanks to the French nuclear energy we did what I hope we will do at the European scale in a few years time long term contracts with low cost for energy intensive business but look at the situation if the automotive sectors decide to buy Chinese steel it's over in three to five years time for these guys and the same guys we saved vis-à-vis China when they were competitors they want to build their competitiveness with their suppliers and they go to the Chinese for their suppliers in order to reduce the cost this is what we are doing by the lack of solidarity sometimes in some value chains in Europe so let's be honest if you want to preserve jobs in this continent if you want to preserve our social models if you want to speak about semi-conductors chemical industry etc.

etc.

we have to preserve and define by design European content and to say in some critical sectors we need a minimum percentage of European content this is extremely important and let's be honest on the short run for some of your sectors this is the most efficient approach if we don't have sufficiently credible measures on the short run everything I mentioned before it will take time let's imagine we will deliver the capital market union this year before the money will come to your pocket it will take a few years let's imagine we will deliver the simplification it will take time we have to urge and accelerate on all these issues but protection is just the only way to preserve the industrial footprint we have today I want us to deliver the next generation with the investment package but we are clearly in emergency mode this is why we need that and if we are not sufficiently and collectively efficient perhaps for some sectors we will have to take some tariffs across the board measures in order to deliver this agenda but look at your sector because of energy costs and other subsidies in China 10% but this is just the beginning and look at the different sectors under such a pressure so sorry I was too long but I spoke with passion but I decided to come here first because I love the prime minister of this country and I know he loves this city so I took this commitment but second because I clearly share this feeling of emergency we cannot wait we have to accelerate our decisions and tomorrow will be key in our retreat but we have to take very short-term measures and sometimes some of these measures we are not part of our DNA but we are living totally different new times so we have to accept to deliver some critical measures non-very familiar with the classical European toolkit because we are living different times emergency mode so let's move and let's act thank you for your attention

thank you very much yeah it does serve a round of applause indeed it was passionate Mr. President as usual straightforward you gave us a lot of food for thought I'm not sure we're going to cover it all so I'll start the first question when we try to get raised hands I think I was intrigued by well first of all congratulations I read it just a few months ago that France in the sixth year consecutive sixth year is the first destination for FDA in Europe wow so what's your secret

because first we had a lot of we had a lot of to recover before so

that's humble that's humble

but we've been number one in attractiveness in Europe during the past six years I mean it was based on first labor market reforms attractive package with the flat tax and we design a very simple approach in order to accelerate investment so we were non-competitive in terms of taxation and capital so we just put ourselves I would say on the average on the Europe with something very simple the flat tax in 2017 second we were non-competitive on labor costs and labor regulations so we fixed it and third we identified the fact that on top of regulations and taxes simplicity and acceleration was key so we designed a series of process where we accelerate and we have a tailor-made approach for the foreign investors so this is how we attracted in several sectors and we started to re-industrialize the country I have to say that France desindustrialize much more than Germany Italy or others 20 years ago and 15 years ago so we are recovering because we are at a different point in the cycle so we have to be humble and this is why we are as well let we are clearly suffering less on the short run of the effect I just mentioned because we were less exposed because we were less good 15 or 20 years ago but we are all in total solidarity because if you kill the chemical sector in Germany or North Italy or Austria it's bad for everybody so this is how we build this attractiveness strategy and this is how probably something which is consistent with what I mentioned with protection I think what we have to do is to convince some of our key challengers not to sell just their products but to come to invest in Europe and I think this is a game changer and this is what we started to do with the US to say we don't want just to buy your solutions but we want you for instance to build here your solutions your data centers your computing capacities so we had 109 billion commitments last year and to the Chinese as well to say we want tech transfer and investment because on some competences you are super good but if we have and if we deliver this European preference and this European content this is extremely attractive because you can go to the China and to say if you come to Europe you are part of the European landscape so you will be eligible to this European preference come invest and make the tech transfer because we need it so it's not it's how you can articulate attractiveness and protection

and indeed you are doing it in Europe attracts in Chinese I mean before we open the floor maybe Marco when you speak about the EU the single markets the ambition to unify etc when we hear the commission they said well often we do omnibuses for example like for chemicals we go to ours but when it goes to parliament it is not voted there may be one voice out of the 27 who may block the 26 or the 10 that's number one so and when we meet CEOs and industrial leaders we just wonder are you going to have this Greenland moment I will call it in Davos where we felt Europe is behind something right because it's it's as important right and what's going on we are the industrialists in the industry the Europe so what does it take for you guys tomorrow to agree to agree and if there are disagreements to prioritize and level it and say this is good for Europe and there may be people not satisfied but in a way it's not a democracy

first I think tomorrow we will agree on that the difficulty is not one or two member states around the table blocking the others it's much more in the discussion with the parliament with sensitivities and political groups and the fact that it takes time so I think it's totally doable if we manage to share and convey this feeling of emergency and as you know I'm a big fan of our Europe and European Union and a big fan to change it but I think we can be reasonably and seriously optimistic because when I when I look at the past 15 years we did very bad during the financial crisis why because we remain divided between north and south and we were super slow and it took us five to eight years to fix the financial crisis when the US which triggered by the way this financial crisis fixed it in one year max it killed a lot of growth and opportunities for our continent but on the other side if you take COVID and war in Ukraine we were extremely fast and we fix the situation very rapidly March 2020 beginning of the COVID pandemic May 2020 Franco-Germain summit to decide common debt to insurance for the recovery plan July 2020 common summit big emergency three days we delivered the package 750 billion common issuance to fix the situation February 2022 the war in Ukraine it took us two days to take the first sanctions and the first package of support of Ukraine why because in these two cases we had clearly the feeling we were in front of a symmetric shock hurting all of us and a clear emergence we were very bad during the financial crisis because we had the feeling it was an asymmetric shock hurting just the over indebted countries what is important today is to be sure that what we are living on our industry is a symmetric shock killing all the countries if everybody is lucid on the fact that this is a shock and not a transition it's going super fast and it's hurting everybody at the same scale and same speed we can deliver this agenda the problem is that till now too many countries or political parties have the feeling that they can still in a sort of normal business mode it is a big mistake and when I speak for instance about common debt I don't speak about France but if we are not able to invest in the key sectors it's a killer for the small economies for the smaller countries they have no fiscal room no capacity to deliver these common issues so it means either we will not deliver not invest in common because we will go back to the fiscal national space and they don't have it so this is a common interest so my conviction is we have clearly to convey the message that we are in emergency mode this is a symmetric shock for all the economies and we are close to be too late so now action mode

yeah and count on us to give you all the data to show you that the industry absolutely

so on the omnibus to make it short I think all the omnibus package being prepared plus the industrial accelerator act which is to be issued in the days to come next week I think we have clearly to reshape the agenda and deliver in the weeks and months to come and commit all together and put our parliamentary group together to say okay it's a new world guys if we don't make a big move forward

so that's a light in the tunnel guys so let us take Q&A from the floor Marco can you help yes absolutely this is I've remembered all your pictures from my heart but I've cheated a bit there you go yes thank you so much Monsieur le Brésilant thank you so much for your passionate speech and interventions also on the energy sector I'm here to represent Siemens Energy today and we hear a lot in your speech that we recognize what we see in practice for the energy sector and you spend a lot on it at the first part of your speech then when we talked about the preferred in Europe not yet so much and we see as an energy sector we're doing a lot to invest in new technologies to really make our system more secure more resilient and we see European Union and member states investing a lot in innovation things like green hydrogen projects small modular reactors and power plants but at the same time when it goes into practice the hydrogen electrolyzers for example we do see these suppliers from third countries strongly undercutting the European manufacturers so first of all we want to show the support and say really what can we do in those new industries and really the things where we have the intellectual property here in Europe to ensure that that taxpayer money actually does flow into the hydrogen the SMRs the power plants that have supported the supply chain in Europe what can we do and also what can we do as business to support you there

you're perfectly right it's a perfect example if we take green hydrogen on what we should deliver first simplification if you take hydrogen this is a new market a few years ago we started to to frame this market at the European scale and imagine what did we do we decided to fragment this market by design we did a crazy thing once again why because we were divided amongst member states due to our national energy schemes and especially because we were divided between France and Germany on the nuclear this is why we took a series of red regulations to regulate the hydrogen to say you should have the X percentage of renewable to produce this hydrogen Y percentage of nuclear even nuclear was not quoted because we were not in line we create something super complicated we have to simplify the hydrogen regulation number one it should be part of this omnibus and we push for that in order to have a single super easy hydrogen regulation at the European scale being produced and based on tech neutrality tech neutrality and energy neutrality is key I don't care it's a renewable coming from Belgium Netherlands Denmark or Spain or nuclear energy in Europe I do prefer when it's low carbon when it's competitive and when it is produced on the European soil if you take these three criteria full stop whatever the technology will be let's make it even simpler we didn't do so we did the opposite so first point on hydrogène simplification based on this criteria second point European content European content on hydrogène is key because what you say is the perfect truth countries and some big industrials are buying some of non-European solutions at the same time who are financing investment in European solutions and they are as efficient both of them this for instance American solutions were subsidized by the American taxpayers super super good news for them they are competitive they enter in the market and they are treated exactly like a European solution there is no European preference at the equivalent level of innovation if you put a European content and European preference you preserve this advantage first you preserve the first investment we made in order to deliver innovation and second you guarantee that when you have a mechanism where we put the European taxpayer money it is to be channeled in priority towards European players this is exactly what we did on the automotive sectors with the recent regulation and I think it was a good move favoring European green steel for instance we have to do the same on hydrogen and the third point is investment if we want to be in the rest on green hydrogen but as well SMRs and so on all the new generation on nuclear the level of investment and public investment as well is huge we cannot pretend just to have private money and if you look at the US you have a lot of private money in the US on the nuclear energy but you have a lot of public money if I take energy it's true if I take space it's true everybody is fascinated by Starlink I'm super happy but if you are lucid Mr.

Musk he's probably one of the guys of the world we had in his pocket in his pocket the most billion I mean we had billion dollars of the American taxpayers in order to be subsidized I mean Elon Musk is first an over subsidized guy by the federal agency in the US good news it make he's super innovative and he became competitive thanks to this American approach he was financed by public money and private money but a big bunch of department of defense among them second he was preserved by an American preference if you take the institutional launch for space industry and he became competitive and came to our market if we don't do the same for our own players meaning European preference in space for the the institutional launching in your sector to buy a green hydrogen when you have a European solution or European SMR for industry and if we don't have the right level of European public investment to have this type of federal program to put a lot of money no chance we will be in the race and we are super naive just to consider it's a startup among the others it's totally bullshit I mean it was largely prepared and it's a political it's a political program with a lot of public money so on these key sectors of innovation we need much more public money this is why we need I think these common issues because today we are not equipped to do so in order to invest in your sector energy is one of these drivers so simplification on green hydrogen and other key points to go faster and be tech neutral european preference and european content to be designed to be sure that we protect you and we favor your growth and third common I mean euro bonds to finance innovation in the critical sectors and especially hydrogen and nuclear

thank you very much mr president that's very intriguing by the way the investments and the bond you are proposing yeah I mean the light is getting closer at least for hydrogen with the soup of color right will manage another question we have time for two more thank you thank you thank you for your speech and your constant attention to the industry but in this very difficult period we need more than word we need decision European industry squeezed between the west where we have an unfair or an unbalanced trade agreement with the US 20% devaluation of the dollar and very cheap gas price just to seek a few examples on the east side we have China who is now threatening more than 70% of our European industry with subsidies huge capacity of production and low labor cost and all that is surrounded by a nice European organization that is still over regulating everything the pace of over regulation has not reduced despite all what the announcement if you look the reality for industrial implementation of Draghi and Letta report speed is close to standstill two years ago omnibus were announced I know that all the industrial went on board of the omnibus hoping for simplification of our life even even knowing that an omnibus is not the fastest train that exists but today we are all scared that it could reach its destination with no one alive on board so with desinitualization going very fast can we how can we wake up industry or can we apply mirror clause with much more efficiency just a single proposal instead of putting pressure on mirror clause we say we cannot apply any EU regulation on manufacturer before EU can secure that any product coming in apply to the regulation and how do you intend to put with us pressure on EU to have all those changes implemented fast because we're at risk thank you we'll take the other question Mr.

President and then we'll combine if you can we found an American CEO invest in France so we thought that was a perfect perspective

as well

President Macron thank you very much for your inspiring words my name is Sean Cohane I'm with Cabot Corporation we're as Marco said a US chemical company with a long and proud history here in Europe and so I first want to thank you for France's strong support for strategic industrial projects including our project for an energy center in Port Jerome together with the industrial cluster I think that's a very important message my question really is how do you see the balance being calibrated between supportive investment frameworks as we've seen in France along with the urgent need for relief on EU ETS free allocation which is again has a risk of undermining the very investment framework that's required thank you thank you maybe we start with the first one thank

you very much and thank you for your words and your commitment both of you in different conditions I think as you mentioned it yes it's clear that we have today an issue with energy costs our competitiveness and as I mentioned we cannot have the situation on energy costs plus the mechanism we put on the table which are clearly hurting a lot of economies I speak from country which is not in the same situation as a lot of others because I mean due to our nuclear energy basis I'm definitely less impacted than a lot of other economies but if I take the Polish Slovakians the Czech and we are all together in an integrated economic area it's clear that ETS1 has a lot of impacts this is why we propose some I don't want to be too technical but we have several measures to take it I think killing ETS1 or releasing it would be a mistake because you create unpredictability and you create a lot of dilemmas especially vis-à-vis those who made the efforts so it's counterproductive and I think it would be a huge mistake for the Europeans to say competitiveness means killing the green deal and the green agenda I think it's honestly stupidity for us because it's part of our competitiveness at the end of this transition we projects to accelerate the decarbonization this is what we have to do those who are super impacted by the ETS mechanism today are those who are too slow or too far in the transition what we have to do is not to leave them alone is to help them to accelerate by making additional process so we should probably use that to front load these proceeds and to invest them in this transition as for your point on how to deliver and to be much more concrete for me the first point is the situation politically is largely different from even one year ago one year ago when I pushed for this agenda we were much more divided I can tell you I think we have today much more consensus on European preference I mean Ursula von der Leyen backed this agenda a few days ago consensus of some of these measures but to be very concrete for me I will tell and share with my colleagues tomorrow but we have six months if by end of June on the dozen of omnibus plus capital market union we didn't deliver we have to make a big stop and build an and cooperation we have to change the method it means that this method doesn't work so for me I will put us and I would like all of us to put ourselves in an emergency mode to say we have six months to deliver everything which is identified where there is no discussion no divergence and say ok we have to deliver for this date and provide 100% of the visibility second I totally agree with you that at the same time we have to strengthen the credibility of our controls and the solidity of our custom union it was all the debate we had with our agriculture on Mercosur there was no mirror close exactly what you say is the problem we had on Mercosur with agriculture no mirror close no control I cannot explain to a farmer and industrial I will punish you with the regulation and I will favor the import of somebody I will not control and not being under the same regulation this is completely crazy this is when regulation for climate or social welfare means just this industrialization on our continent so at the same time we are doing the simplification on this agenda so omnibus capital market union for me third point we have to strengthen clearly this custom union the commission issued few months ago some guidelines but we have to make it much more credible by the increase of controls and the regulations and indeed by June we need this assessment on some critical regulations if we are unable to make this control we need to stand still I mean not just a stand still but we have to withdraw it could cover your point in six months time we don't deliver what I proposed my last point is clearly on the protection and European preference believe me what we did with the safeguard clause on steel what we started to do in some critical sectors this is a timing issue and on this on some critical sectors this European content sometimes perhaps tariffs or super speed inquiry this is the top priority and this one for me is the one where we should deliver tomorrow with a very concrete agenda I have to be honest on this point I am not sure that I have 27 member states super happy with investment package and European preference but you are here to convince everybody with me so we have the fire power but I am serious

shall we come with you tomorrow well I mean we are happy to hear this and you have really disruptive ideas you know from raising you know the debts and using it to invest but also the protection as French Chimie was saying we are facing competition from the US 15 to zero China not only with dirty products they moved from imitation to innovation they are investing in the best available technologies like EV or electrification but there are also tariffs hidden inside the 27 member unions we made the math you know them 40% for goods and 100% plus for services so I hope that the single market dream of the lore is going to become a reality at one point of time and tap it to the 450 million about Mr President well word the last word

no I think for me these four pillars are to be addressed as rapidly as we can and one of the issue of the days and weeks to come is clearly to deliver this big acceleration and clearly it's a question of life for some parts of our industry and I'm extremely serious about that but we have to be lucid as well on the fact that if we want to be serious on the deepening of the single market even if we go super fast it will take semesters and sometimes years this is why we need super short term measures reassessment of some regulations acceleration on some simplifications and acceleration on the European protection and some protection measures otherwise we will be killed so in the phasing I would say for me simplification protection is super fast issues deepening of the single market is super important but we know it will take a little bit more time and investment is to be decided now to be invested in the months to come and years to come but it's not sufficient but today what is at stake really is that some parts of the European industry could disappear in the semesters to come if we don't take the right measures in terms of simplification and protection and the de-risking is not sufficient to do so and the investment is as well a necessity this is why I really believe and I will leave you on this very simple message we need an holistic approach what I call the speed approach simplification protection investment de-risking the four pillars speed are the one we need but we have to speed up as well our approach because if we don't deliver in the three to four months to come I take your point I cannot come back to see you next year say guys I have a good news I'm convinced I'm on your side and so on my credibility will be totally killed and this is the last minute so I'm lucid that we are in the same race with you and we have to deliver this holistic agenda this speed agenda with much more speed and much more scale but you can't count on me

thank you very much Mr. President

I

think we'll be with you tomorrow we are our hope yeah a round of applause for thank you

you can count on me you can count on my colleagues we will do our best and tomorrow for me what's important is that we decide as well a big change in terms of method because the one we had done the past year didn't deliver sufficiently fast but I don't want you to underestimate your strengths we are still an extremely innovative continent your companies in all the different sectors and I I mean you are best in class companies and innovators and I don't want as well to have I would say too much negative narrative coming from the European side we have to resist we have to deliver our agenda but we have to be super ambitious for ourselves and very positive for ourselves because we underestimate something we didn't discuss till now we are and we remain a continent where rule of law predictability remain valid and look at the situation China is an authoritarian regime I mean no offense this is their collective choice and US is becoming an unpredictable economy and governance for companies and sometimes for countries at the middle of that you have the European Union and it remains a place where rule of law and predictability remains valid I suggest you to pitch that for your investors because if we are able to fix what we are discussing on the short run what I mention is an extremely important leverage for our future because this is our ability to remain an core geography for a lot of investors because it means we are not hectic we are not unpredictable sometimes indeed takes time for us to fix some issues but we are here well known and reliable and when you want to be the last resort of a system it is much better to be in this position and this is why I believe in my euro bond because when you provide to the market safe and liquid asset and you are predictable it's extremely attractive and this is the right moment to do so but don't underestimate that for yourself and for our continent thank you

thank you one more applause