The EU agenda for improving competitiveness is missing in action. Economic competitiveness has been a central plank in the development of the European Union - a relentless quest for policies that lead to more prosperity and that make European companies in world markets more successful. However,...

In this paper, we will discuss how Europe makes digital policy and how its digital economic performance can be improved. The focus is on the D9+ initiative. Launched in 2016 on the initiative of former Swedish trade minister, Ann Linde, nine countries with a particular interest in matters of the...

Europe's competitiveness could be substantially improved by a trade policy that facilitates more trade and other forms of cross-border exchange. The evidence is clear: the EU trades less with the rest of the world than would be expected given the size of its economy. With 85 percent of global...

The EU published its new Standardisation Strategy in 2022. The strategy contains some good ideas to improve the way European standards are set. However, in its attempt to gain more control over technical standards, the EU risks killing the goose that lays the golden egg. The primary motivation...

The EU stands at a crucial economic juncture. Economic growth in Europe's mature economies has stagnated, with productivity and other indicators of economic vitality showing poor results. Public debt is alarmingly high in several countries, and the region faces new fiscal demands due to an...

There is now a long history of countries improving sustainability standards in most parts of the economy while at the same time pursuing the ambitions of rules-based international trade and economic integration with other countries. It is not surprising that countries at the vanguard of...

Covid-19 and its broader implications have highlighted the importance of Europe's digital transformation to ensure Europeans' social and economic well-being. It provides important new learnings about Europe's quest for "technology sovereignty". While the debate about technology sovereignty is...

In den vergangenen Monaten wurden von einigen führenden Europapolitikern Strategien zur Erreichung einer sog. "europäischen Technologiesouveränität" gefordert. Die Fokussierung auf technologische und zuweilen auch "industrielle Souveränität" durch Politiker in Brüssel, Paris und anderen...

This study brings together two major sources of growth in the modern economy: trade and new ideas. Trade is a crucial process to improve economic specialisation and raise the productivity of economies. It is also a channel to diffuse technology and knowledge across countries. International...

This Policy Brief takes stock of the global and European trade and carbon-emission effects from CBAM. It argues that the current design of the CBAM is not good enough and, ultimately, that there are risks that it will dent the positive effects on global carbon emissions that come from a lower...