Letta urges EU leaders to remove obstacles from the single market because "There is no time to lose" against the USA

BRUSSELS, April 18 () –

Former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta urged the heads of state and government of the European Union this Thursday to eliminate the obstacles to the single market because “there is no time to lose” since the “gap” between the EU and the United States in terms of economic results is “increasingly”.

“We have to give it a good push because we are falling behind,” said Letta upon his arrival at the summit this Thursday in Brussels, where he will present to the leaders his report on EU competition, which proposes greater regulatory simplification and reduction of bureaucracy to address the “asymmetry” between territories and legal and fiscal systems among other “obstacles” to productive activity.

Letta has invited the Twenty-Seven to “strengthen the single market and avoid fragmentation” by working to integrate the “remaining fringes of the Delors period”: energy, telecommunications and financial markets. “In all three we are losing competition and, therefore, my proposal is to integrate them,” explained Letta.

The former Prime Minister's report invites, among other proposals, greater harmonization of the EU fiscal framework to facilitate the free movement of workers, goods and services and to support growth and private investment in order to guarantee a fiscal environment ” more uniform, simplifying current complexities and reducing internal tax competition within the EU.

“We know what we have to do and the barriers that exist,” pointed out, for her part, the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, who has expressed her outright refusal to talk about fiscal harmonization, which she opposes as a “country.” small”, while criticizing how harmful the “subsidy race” is.

On the other hand, he calls for a greater connection between European capital markets so that services can also circulate freely in the EU and has denounced this situation with an example: “Canadian architects can provide their services freely throughout Europe, but not Estonians. “.

“We know the obstacles: we have to work on energy prices and the productivity of our workers and we must find a balance to be competitive. Regarding technology, we have to be able to combine both to compete with China and the United States “added Kallas, who hopes to make progress this Thursday.

In the same line as Kallas, the Irish Prime Minister, Simon Harris, has highlighted fiscal harmonization and the creation of a supervision mechanism as the main “concerns” regarding the 'Letta report' and has stressed that “the idea of ​​centralizing supervision does not benefit all Member States and certainly not the smallest ones.

Harris has accused the EU's inability to comply with the Capital Markets Union, something she has called a “failure”, although she is confident that this Thursday's debate will culminate in a commitment to advance and deepen the architecture of the single market. .

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has also been “optimistic” about agreeing on “ambitious” conclusions on competitiveness using the 'Letta report' as “inspiration”, since he believes it can be a good framework to identify tools and specify specific measures in the coming months.