A generalised political consensus appears to exist on the European Union’s overarching goal of a competitive and green European economy. The question of how to achieve this, however, is hard to answer. Comprehensive policy packages reflecting many of the trade-offs needed to reach the goal have been put forward by two former Italian prime ministers in reports commissioned to steer the next EU policymaking cycle (2024-2029; Draghi, 2024; Letta, 2024). But do their prescriptions align with other expert preferences and opinions?
We conducted a modest experiment on this, taking advantage of an annual gathering of EU economic and policy experts – the Bruegel Annual Meetings (BAM) in Brussels – to capture via a survey a small snapshot of expert views on trade-offs related to EU industrial and climate policy. The objective was to shed some light on the policy mood in Brussels, especially in the context of the reports by Mario Draghi (2024) and Enrico Letta (2024), which are likely influence the EU policymaking agenda for the next five years.
About the authors:
Marie-Sophie Lappe is a Research Assistant at Bruegel.
Francesco Nicoli is assistant professor of political science at the Politecnico Institute of Turin. He also serves as professor of political economy at Gent University and he is affiliate fellow at the department of economics of the University of Amsterdam as well as non-resident fellow at Bruegel.