BRUSSELS (BELGIUM) (ITALPRESS) – “We call on the Commission to act immediately to protect the industry of our continent from the unfair competition of non-European players, promote its development and ensure an adequate financial allocation to support the industrial transition. We will not accept buffer measures: immediate, clear, radical and effective reforms are needed.” With these words, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Mr Adolfo Urso, opened in Brussels the fourth meeting of the Ministerial Alliance for Energy Intensity Industries, chaired by Italy and attended by ministers and undersecretaries of 25 European countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Poland. Urso first highlighted how Europe is at a crucial moment “for the presentation of some regulatory proposals that will be key to relaunching the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries”. From December 3rd, the Economic Security Package with ‘RESource EU’ has been on the table, a lighthouse on critical and strategic raw materials essential for European industry value chains: “It is important that the European Commission continues to monitor scrap flows towards non-EU countries, in the light of which urgent measures of limitation must be taken,” Urso pointed out.
In the coming weeks the Commission will also express itself on the Industrial Accelerator Act and on the revision of the CBAM, on which Italy has reiterated clear and shared expectations with the most exposed sectors: “From the first we expect an organic framework for the promotion of clean technologies, including steel and green concrete, the simplification of permits and the introduction of the principle of European Preference, the basis for promoting goods and services ‘Made in Europe’. On the other hand, the second package will have to achieve concrete answers for the targeted extension of CBAM to downstream products, to block phenomena of bypassing the mechanism and to protect our exporters.” At the heart of Italian demands also the protection of the most exposed chains. For chemistry, Minister Urso recalled “the recent creation of the European Chemistry Alliance”, a crucial tool “to define actions to protect the productive capacity and competitiveness of the sector, both in basic chemistry and biochemistry, both strategic for Europe”. For the steel industry he noted as “we welcomed the proposal for updating safeguard measures. Analogue support for the recent proposal for safeguards for ferrolegae. We have a rapid approval: they must come into force immediately.”.
The debate on these three main areas has therefore developed between the ministers of the Ministerial Alliance for Energy High Intensity Industries: the first reactions to the RESource-EU Plan, the further protection actions of the European industry after the safeguards on steel and ferrolegae, and the assessment of possible restrictions on exports of metal scrap. Particular attention has also been paid to compartments that are suffering more distorted competition from Asia, such as fashion, textiles and plastics. Urso brought to the centre of the agenda of ministers the “fight against fast fashion”, admonishing on the increasing pressure of extra EU flows: “An invasion of Asian products is taking place, even as an indirect effect of American duties to Chinese and Indian products. The measures announced, such as those on duties for products of a value of less than 150Ç, must immediately enter into force. We cannot wait for 2028.” The work of the Ministerial Alliance for Energy Intensity Industries will continue in the next few hours to the Competitiveness Council, which will include a point dedicated to the energy-intensive industries, presented by Italy along with France, Spain and Poland, the latter call to take the Presidency at the next meeting in February.
“Europe must do its part by thinking about its enterprises to its workers and its citizens, and at the same time I think it should not be isolated from other countries in the south of the world who can share this development and growth strategy with us,” he said at the edge of the meeting. “Europe has to do itself and is in a position to do so. If he raises his head, if he thinks, sharing the common goals that are at the foundation of our European home,” he added.
As regards the automotive industry, the Minister said that it is expected “that the commission will carry out a radical and effective review of the CO2 regulation on cars and that it will do just as regards heavy vehicles and commercial vehicles.” The Minister pointed out that the car industry is “the first European industry, the one that develops the largest volumes and that allows for greater employment”, and that therefore it must be for this reason “the main dossier on which the commission must carry out its work, in the wake of what they indicated in the two documents Italy, Germany and to which we think we can also associate France”.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
