EU Leaders Vow to Accelerate Single Market in Struggle to Compete with US and China

  • European Union (EU) leaders agreed on Thursday, February 12, 2026, on a wide-ranging set of commitments to improve how the bloc's border-free internal market works so Europe's businesses can be competitive and survive aggressive economic rivalry from the U.S. and China.
  • Meeting at a Belgian castle, the leaders stressed how urgent it was to act and agreed to speed up the completion of a savings and investment union, review merger rules to help create European champions, make it easier for companies to get started and scale up and cut red tape throughout, top EU officials said.
  • The European Commission will present in March 2026 a plan on how to proceed with this deepening of the European Union's single market of 450 million consumers, with the aim for leaders to agree on a concrete timetable. That will include allowing a preference for European goods in public purchases in strategic sectors, von der Leyen told a press conference at the end of the meeting.
  • EU growth has persistently lagged that of the United States and China and EU productivity and innovation in fields such as AI has fallen short, with the bloc also squeezed by tariffs and export curbs by its global rivals. To speed things up, von der Leyen said the EU executive arm would push on with a long delayed capital markets union that would allow some 10 trillion euros ($11.86 trillion) of savings now languishing in bank accounts to be invested in the EU economy.
  • While all EU countries want a more competitive bloc, they disagree on how to get there, and have done so for years, on key issues such as whether to issue joint euro bonds, or on how to cut electricity prices. Many leaders also stressed it was vital the EU acts on high energy prices, with Europe's industry facing power prices that are more than double those in the U.S. and China.
  • While no decisions on this were made, the Commission will put forward options on how to proceed at the next EU summit in March 2026, such as whether to continue a system whereby the most expensive energy source, typically gas, sets a common power price, including for cheaper renewables and nuclear.

(Source: Reuters)