Ursula von der Leyen’s speech to the European Parliament today has all the right buzzwords: innovation, investment, simplification.
But beneath the Commission President’s polished delivery lies a recurring irony of the Brussels mindset, an endless cycle of identifying self-inflicted wounds, only to propose ever more centralised solutions.
Von der Leyen laid out a three-point plan for economic revival, all grounded in what she sees as the continent’s chief weaknesses: insufficient capital for innovation, overregulation choking investment, and energy costs hampering industry. But while her diagnosis was at times refreshingly candid, the prescriptions remain locked within the EU’s technocratic reflex: more frameworks, more strategies, more planning.
“First, we need to make it easier for innovative companies to grow,” she declared, noting that European startups “lack access to the capital they need.” This, she rightly observes, puts the EU at a disadvantage against global rivals. Yet her remedy, “speed up our work on the capital markets,” “build the Savings and Investment Union,” and deliver the “first ever startup and scale-up strategy”, suggests Brussels is once again placing its faith in bureaucratic architecture rather than unleashing market forces.
The so-called Capital Markets Union (CMU) has been on the Commission’s agenda since 2015. Nearly a decade later, it remains mired in complexity, with national resistance, regulatory fragmentation, and financial protectionism slowing progress. Von der Leyen’s renewed push is welcome in principle. But it begs the question: if the CMU hasn’t delivered in ten years, why should another strategy, yet another ‘Union’, succeed now?
Her second point was, if anything, even more revealing. “Two out of three EU companies say that regulation is a key obstacle to investment,” she said. “We need to make it easier and faster for companies. Speed and simplification.” One might expect such an admission to be followed by a comprehensive rollback of burdensome rules. Instead, we are promised “omnibus proposals” for “strategic sectors.” The Brussels solution to overregulation, it seems, is more regulation—just rebranded as “simplification.”
It is the EU’s perennial contradiction: acknowledging that its own legislative output stifles enterprise, while insisting that salvation lies in further top-down management. There is no mention of empowering member states to loosen controls, nor any sign that the Commission is prepared to relinquish its grip over economic micromanagement. Everything must still flow through the centre.
The third plank of von der Leyen’s speech, predictably, turned to energy, a topic on which the Commission has long congratulated itself. “Energy costs in particular continue to be a competitive disadvantage for our industry,” she said. “That is why it is so important we step up investment in grids, interconnectors and storage.”
Here again, she identifies a genuine problem. Europe’s businesses, especially in manufacturing, continue to pay well above global averages for electricity and gas. The decision to shut down nuclear plants, the sluggish rollout of alternative capacity, and a reliance on unreliable renewables have all left a gaping hole in the continent’s energy mix.
Her answer? More public investment, more infrastructure planning, more action plans—specifically the “Affordable Energy Action Plan,” a Brussels concoction that aims to square the circle of green goals and industrial competitiveness. It is a noble ambition. But unless the Commission is willing to revisit its rigid climate dogma, particularly the rapid phase-out of stable energy sources, costs will remain high and industry will continue to bleed.
Von der Leyen reiterated the EU’s commitment to eliminate Russian fossil fuel imports by 2027: “It is time to turn off the tap and end the era of Russian fossil fuels in Europe for good.” That is an admirable objective, both strategically and morally. But the path to energy independence cannot be paved with ideology alone. Relying on intermittent sources while restricting domestic production—whether gas, nuclear or biomass, is a recipe not for resilience, but fragility.
What the President’s speech ultimately reveals is a Europe trapped between ambition and inertia. Von der Leyen is right to say that Europe’s entrepreneurs are being throttled, that investment is stalling, and that energy is a structural weakness. But her solutions remain rooted in the Brussels playbook: strategies instead of sovereignty, integration instead of innovation, centralisation instead of competition.
Europe’s real opportunity lies not in deepening its alphabet soup of Unions and frameworks, but in trusting its member states, cutting red tape, and letting markets breathe. Ursula Von der Leyen promises speed and simplification. If only she would start by simplifying Brussels itself.
