Bruno Le Maire wants to “evolve” European rules against China

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire called on Tuesday for European rules to “evolve” to allow the European Union to become a “great economic continent” capable of competing with China and the United States. "Europe can be the great economic continent of the 21st century with a low-carbon, fair, united economic model, more enviable than the centralized Chinese model or the American model", declared Bruno Le Maire at the Rencontre des entrepreneurs de France ( REF) organized by Medef.

To rise to "the first economic place", the Old Continent must seize the opportunities offered by generative artificial intelligence and the necessary decarbonization of the economy in the face of climate change, he continued before the gathered bosses. at the Parisian Longchamp racecourse. “If we want the game to be played in the 21st century between the United States, China and Europe, and not in a dangerous face-to-face between the Chinese continent and the American continent, it is now that it is played” , supported Bruno Le Maire, considering it essential that the EU defends its “interests”.

He cited as an example the subsidies for electric cars, which should soon be subordinated in France to an “environmental score” likely to limit Chinese imports. “It's quite complex. I would have preferred to be able to say, the European bonus is reserved for industrial products with European content. This is what China is doing, this is what the United States is doing, this is what I still cannot do in Europe because of European standards, ”lamented Bruno Le Maire.

"Let's change the European rules to promote European content, European production, European technologies and European employment", he pleaded. "Let's be transgressive!" he said. “We have to hurry to change our standards, to simplify them and to promote European content if we want to counter the rise in the range of the Chinese” in the automotive sector. Bruno Le Maire also felt that there was "absolute urgency" to create the capital markets union within the EU in order to encourage investment.

Asked moreover about the current relationship between France and Germany, which would be less fluid than under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bruno Le Maire agreed "that it is always easier to work with a government where there is has a single political formation, than with a coalition government". “But personal relations are excellent” with Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Finance Minister Christian Lindner, he assured, “and they are also remarkable between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Macron”.

According to him, there is "a single real point of strategic divergence": "I repeat to our German friends 'do not criticize French nuclear power, it is the absolute red line of French economic policy'". “We are not ready to give it up and on the contrary we want to develop it,” he added. For his part, the new president of Medef Patrick Martin wanted the German government to "go beyond a somewhat selfish approach to these subjects", and "take note that the French nuclear offer is a benefit for France itself. , and for Europe in general in the perspective of decarbonisation”.