Macron: EU has only 2 or 3 years to stave off total US, China dominance

Washington and Beijing are leaving the European Union lagging behind, French President Emmanuel Macron said in pessimistic remarks.

“Our former model is over. We are overregulating and underinvesting. In the two to three years to come, if we follow our classical agenda, we will be out of the market,” he warned during a panel discussion at the Berlin Global Dialogue meeting on Wednesday.

“The EU could die, we are on a verge of a very important moment,” he added.

The French president argued that Europe is lagging behind the Unites States and China on key files such as climate change, AI, defense and security.

Former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi raised a similar warning in a report published in September, saying that the EU faces an “existential challenge” unless it radically transforms its economy to enhance its competitiveness.

Macron said he fully supports Draghi’s conclusions and that Europe should rush to implement them. “I think this is quite true, we are at risk,” he said.

“They invest much more, they are much more in advance,” he said, adding that looking at gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the past three decades the U.S. delivered an increase of 60 percent, Europe only delivered 30 percent.

“And it’s not sustainable with the social model that we have,” he added.

Macron argued that to be competitive in today’s multipolar world order the EU should deepen the single market and simplify its regulations.

“If we want clearly to be more competitive and have our place in this multipolar order first we need a simplification shock,” Macron said.

Talking about trade, the French president said that if China and the U.S. do not respect the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the EU should not respect them either.

“Twenty-five years ago, we thought that [with] China joining WTO it would comply with the laws. It is not the case,” he said, adding that in 2022 the U.S. also decided not to be compliant with WTO rules related to the Fishing Regulation Act.

“And I have a suggestion,” he said, “when both U.S. and China do not respect the rules, we should not be the only one in the room to just abide the rules. This doesn’t fly.

“I don’t suggest trying to become protectionist, this is an awful world, but at least to be fair. With our industry, with our farmers, with our people,” he added.