Corporate lobbyists push for deregulation while workers pay the price

Competitiveness has become the most abused word in Brussels.

It is invoked to justify almost anything — except the one thing Europe actually needs: a strong industrial policy to build quality jobs, to safeguard and reinforce economic capacity in Europe and to achieve shared prosperity.

At the moment, corporate lobbyists believe they can get anything they want.

Over the last couple of months, it has been open season for them in Brussels. Deregulation has been the order of the day, and consultations have been stacked in their favour.

As a result, some have felt emboldened to tell us what they really think.

They have said in public that introducing transparency over gender pay inequality is a ‘regulatory burden’. In behind-closed-doors meetings, they daydream about stripping back workers’ rights to information about pay and hours of work, as well as protections in case of redundancies.

That gives some indication of the kind of discussion that may have taken place at the dinner EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen hosted with a major employers’ lobby group ahead of this week’s EU leaders’ competitiveness retreat, adding to concerns that the EU’s direction is being shaped more strongly by one part of industry than others.

But is this what businesses actually need?

In trying to import Trumpism to Europe, a clique of corporate lobbyists in Brussels have highlighted how far removed they are from the real challenges facing companies and their workforces on the ground.

‘Made in Europe’, but not deregulation

This was demonstrated last week by the open letter in support of a ‘Made in Europe’ policy and asking that “whenever European public money is used, it must contribute to European production and quality jobs”.

More than 1,200 companies signed that letter. They were joined by the European Trade Union Confederation.

But some of the most powerful corporate voices in Brussels did not support it. Why? Because it did not include a call for deregulation.

Instead, it called for the creation of quality jobs.

Employers and workers on the ground know deregulation is simply not the answer to their problems. It is a purely ideological exercise pushed by a very wealthy minority who have never been comfortable with the European project being a social-market economy, rather than the US-style, winner-take-all capitalism they seem to admire.

Repealing pay transparency will not stop the energy price crisis hammering our industries. Cutting wages will not help Europe harness the potential of artificial intelligence nor replace the investments needed for a real industrial policy. Slashing safety standards will not prevent industrial restructuring or stop the next wave of job losses.

Removing the right to a written contract or even a reply to a worker’s request will do nothing to speed up permitting or solve any of the real barriers facing Europe’s industries and services.

Closures, relocations and redundancies

Across Europe, workers are watching announcements of closures, relocations and redundancies with growing alarm. Entire communities are living through the consequences of decisions taken in boardrooms – decisions too often driven by short-term shareholder logic rather than long-term industrial strategy.

This is the real competitiveness crisis: not that Europe has too many rights, but that there is too little planning and investment. 

Mario Draghi was clear in his report on competitiveness that “using wage repression to lower relative costs” should be ruled out.

Instead, he told EU leaders that competitiveness today is “less about relative labour costs and more about knowledge and skills embodied in the labour force”.

That is exactly the point. Europe’s competitiveness challenge cannot be solved by stripping away rights and protections. It can only be solved by building a mission-led economy — one that sets clear priorities, mobilises the significant investment needed, contributes to creating quality jobs, and brings together employers, trade unions and governments to deliver them.

A ‘mission-led’ economy

A mission-led economy is, above all, an investment strategy. It means ensuring the significant investment needed and setting clear conditions for support, ensuring that European taxpayers’ money builds European capacity — and delivers quality jobs in return — through social conditionalities.

That means industrial policy — not as an abstract concept, but as a practical tool to prevent deindustrialisation, protect economic capacity and build new high-value sectors.

And it means doing so in a way that promotes collective bargaining and delivers quality jobs in every sector and every region, not just in a handful of “winning” clusters. And high-quality public services and infrastructures also play a key role in a successful industrial policy.

Because the green and digital transitions will not succeed if they become synonymous with insecurity. Workers will not support change if change means job losses, wage cuts, or being told to “reskill” in their own time while profits rise and communities are hollowed out. It is necessary to ensure investments and legislation to guarantee just transitions. 

Europe is going through a period of profound transformation —digitalisation, decarbonisation, demographic change and geopolitical shocks all at once.

The question is not whether change will happen. The question is whether we anticipate and manage change, or whether we allow it to hit workers and communities like a series of sudden shocks.

Anticipation is not a slogan. It means rights to training during working hours without costs. It means pathways between jobs, so that workers can move from declining sectors into expanding ones without losing their livelihoods.

And it means strong collective bargaining, social dialogue, and information and consultation rights, to anticipate and manage change, and protections in case of redundancies.

This is also about Europe’s ability to seize new opportunities. The energy transition could create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But it will not happen at the scale or speed required without the necessary investments, and if those jobs are low-paid, insecure or treated as disposable.

The forthcoming Quality Jobs Act is an opportunity to help fix these problems. Strengthening collective bargaining would reduce insecurity and ensure workers share fairly in productivity gains. 

Europe can’t win a race to the bottom

Social dialogue to anticipate and manage change and the introduction of a right to training during working hours would ensure the green and digital transitions do not become a conveyor belt to unemployment.But it must go further.

A serious competitiveness strategy requires an industrial policy that not only protects Europe’s existing strengths, but actively builds new ones – with quality jobs in every sector and every region.

The truth is that Europe could never win a race to the bottom. Our economic success stories show that competitiveness is built through high-quality jobs, sustained investment in productivity, high standards, and strong public services that create the right conditions for private enterprise.

That is why a strong Quality Jobs Act would be a win-win for workers and companies alike. It is not a “social add-on” to competitiveness. It is the foundation of it.

That may not be what a small circle of corporate lobbyists in Brussels want ideologically, but it is what Europe’s companies, workers and communities desperately need.

This stakeholder article is paid for by a third party. All opinions in this article reflect the views of the author and not of EUobserver.