When Europe’s industrial titans gathered in Antwerp in early 2024, the gathering was as much an act of desperation as it was a call to arms.
Chemical, steel, glass, cement, energy and pharmaceutical firms — long the backbone of European manufacturing — warned that entire sectors were unraveling. Investment was draining away, factories were shutting down, and workers were losing livelihoods by the tens of thousands. The message to Brussels was clear: Europe risked deindustrialising.
The Commission, led by President Ursula von der Leyen, heard the warnings and duly appointed former Italian premier Mario Draghi to draft a plan for industrial revival. The result was the much-publicised “Antwerp Declaration,” billed as the kick-off of a “new industrial deal” for Europe.
But many business leaders refused to sign: they argued the document dodged the core problem — Europe’s self-inflicted energy crisis. Without serious policies to ensure affordable, reliable energy (including domestic fossil fuels, expanded nuclear capacity, or even fracking), any such deal was bound to fail.
A year later, at the second summit, things had worsened. Energy costs remained cripplingly high; competitiveness continued to sour. European dependency on imported energy — even from conflict-ridden regions — rendered the continent vulnerable.
At that summit one blunt speaker delivered three “uncomfortable truths” to von der Leyen: first, the net-zero narrative must be subject to honest reassessment; second, energy-mix diversification is critical; third, Member States must have the freedom to develop domestic resources, including hydrocarbons. The room erupted in spontaneous applause — but Brussels’ response was to return to familiar bureaucratic rituals: consultations, impact assessments, and committees.
Nowhere was the result more tangible than in the plant closures, job losses and communities hollowed out across former industrial heartlands. For many firms and workers, these were not mere forecasts — they were reality. Investment dried up. Suppliers collapsed. Families watched factories go dark.
What made this collapse more damning was that much of it could have been avoided or mitigated. Europe’s industrial decline is not merely down to global competition or shift in markets — but to a political and regulatory environment that has turned against heavy industry. A recent Deloitte study, for example, showed that industrial output across the EU fell by more than 10 per cent over two years; in Belgium, the drop reached 13 per cent.
Steel and chemicals sectors turned from net exporters to net importers. One of the report’s striking observations: for major industrial projects, authorisation procedures in the EU can take up to nine years — far longer than in more business-friendly jurisdictions such as the United States or China.
The sprawling regulatory framework managed from Brussels has become a straitjacket for industrial ambition. Recognising the very real problem, the Commission recently launched a “simplification” drive, promising to cut red tape, lighten regulatory burden, and make business “faster and simpler.”
Yet here, too, the record is poor. The simplification plans, wrapped in optimistic language, have mostly resulted in further delays. Deadlines for sustainability reporting and due diligence obligations have been postponed, sometimes by years. The result: businesses remain caught in limbo, unable to plan, invest or rebuild confidence. The simplification agenda looks increasingly like a bureaucratic holding action — not a real commitment to success.
Perhaps worst of all: the Commission seems to believe that time itself will solve the crisis. By stretching processes over years — “stop-the-clock” delays, repeated consultations, multi-year reporting deadlines — Brussels effectively passes the problem to the next legislature. Meanwhile, entire industries collapse. Jobs disappear. Communities shrink. Sovereignty erodes.
This tendency to defer — to pass the buck — is not limited to industrial policy. Critics point out that the EC has proven equally ineffective when it comes to ensuring the integrity of the internal market. Legal enforcement actions are down sharply, with fewer infringement proceedings against member states violating single-market rules. In plain terms: when businesses call out national governments for distortion or fragmentation of the internal market, Brussels often looks the other way — or responds with glacial slowness.
The same problem afflicts EU competitiveness. The Draghi report of 2024 contained hundreds of recommendations to restore Europe’s economic edge — but barely one in ten has been implemented a year later. Draghi himself warned that unless the Commission acts with urgency, Europe will suffer a “slow agony.”
In the meantime, geopolitical tensions are rising. Europe faces the possibility of broader conflict, yet the Commission has done almost nothing to shore up defence manufacturing capacity, scale up munitions production, or rebuild critical infrastructure. Instead, Brussels continues to produce studies, convene committees and launch strategic visions — all while Europe’s industrial and defence sovereignty erodes.
In effect, the Commission’s modus operandi has become delay — regulatory suspension, phased deadlines, slow-motion reform — as if hoping that crises will simply “time-out” or be handed off to someone else to fix later. For business leaders watching their factories fall silent, for workers retraining or emigrating in search of work, and for citizens facing a continent increasingly dependent on foreign energy and defence suppliers, that is not an option.
If Europe is to avert the collapse of the industries that once powered its prosperity — and to defend its own strategic autonomy — it needs more than declarations and simplification plans. It needs urgency. It needs clarity. It needs competence. And it needs a Commission ready to act in real time — not one that believes it can legislate its way out of crisis by buying time.
Centralised, Opaque, Ineffective: The European Commission Under Ursula von der Leyen’s Rule
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