Leading business people from the UK, Germany and Sweden join to call for bold EU reforms

11 November 2013

In a pan-European initiative, organised by Open Europe, business leaders call upon EU politicians "to embrace a bold reform agenda" ahead of next year's European elections.

In an unprecedented and united call published the Sunday Times (subscription required) in the UK, the front page of Dagens Industri in Sweden and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, the entrepreneurs and business leaders – many of whom have never spoken out in the Europe debate before – urge policymakers to construct a more business-friendly, internationally competitive and democratically accountable Europe. Cutting across different sectors and countries, the initiative’s supporters have helped lead companies employing close to a million people across Europe and the world. 

Signatories to the initiative – who have all signed in a personal capacity - include Karl-Johan Persson, the CEO of Swedish retail giant H&M, Dr. h.c. August Oetker, Chairman of renowned German food producer, Dr Oetker, and head of one of Europe’s largest family-owned businesses, Douglas Flint CBE, Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings, Joanna Shields, Chief Executive of Tech City, and Sir John Peace, Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank.

In their open letter they formulated seven core demands for a more business-friendly future EU:

"The European Union is facing enormous challenges. The euro and sovereign debt crisis is only the most obvious symptom of failures that have accumulated over decades. Many entrepreneurs are in global competition. Therefore, we urge for fundamental reforms and regulatory direction decisions at the European level according to the following guiding principles:

1. The EU does not have to become "ever closer" but continually more open and flexible: Competences should be redistributed according to the subsidiarity principle and it should be possible to move some of those competences back to in a decentralised fashion.
2. The EU must be built democratically from below: Democratically elected national parliaments should have the power to prevent unwanted or unnecessary EU regulations. Extensive sovereignty assignments to EU institutions should require the consent of the people.
3. The EU transfer carousel needs to be stopped: The EU budget is still dominated by agricultural and regional funds, which hardly contribute to growth and employment and also redeploy all too many funds via Brussels only within countries or even regions.
4. Lean Union means competitive entrepreneurs: Increasing costs of bureaucracy and regulation arise in Brussels and weigh especially on small and medium-sized businesses that face global competition.
5. Reduce entry barriers: The achievement of a real EU internal market for services alone could allow the EU's gross domestic product to grow by 2.3 per cent - permanently.
6. Making Europe more mobile: the free movement of goods, services, capital and job seekers is the core of European integration. This also applies to the European labour market. Mass unemployment of talented teenager in the south and skill shortages in northern Europe can be overcome in a single market.
7. Economic order, not economic governance: The euro crisis can only be overcome in the long run if obligations of governments and European law are taken seriously again. A reliable regulatory framework for fiscal and monetary policy would promise more stability of the eurozone. The welfare state and leveraged European 'social model' need to be thoroughly overhauled, otherwise Europe will continue to lose out in global competition and endanger its decades of social and political peace.

Leading German journalist and author Bettina Röhl has written a long op-ed for Germany's leading financial magazine Wirtschafts Woche, welcoming the new Open Europe initiative. In her piece, entitled Finally - protests from business!, Röhl commends business leaders for addressing "the blind alley the EU is in.”: "Now business leaders have spoken up -- some of them for the first time. This is not only good, but it is long overdue. All too often, business leaders find it too difficult to become involved in the political debate....It is not that initiatives were surprising in their substance, and neither are they new. But what is new, is that business itself is speaking. It is formulating its own needs, which are also the needs of the economy of a whole.”

Röhl concludes: "Anyone who wants to rob Europe of its diversity and drown it in Brussels fatuity, and all of this under the roof of a single currency, has failed splendidly in their rigidity. By throwing their gaze inwards rather than towards to world markets, they either do not care about European competitiveness, or, they have not understood the global economy."

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