| Hello and a big welcome to our new friends from FEBEA, GIZ, Folksam and others.
“Work,” said Leo Tolstoy, “is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare.” Judging by recent developments in the EU economy, the great Russian author was, at best, only half right: for many Europeans, work is increasingly low-paid, precarious, and – especially in strategic industries – non-existent. The EU has shed 2.3 million manufacturing jobs over the past fifteen years, with a million of these job losses occurring since 2019, according to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). The pace of redundancies has accelerated to truly alarming levels over the past few weeks. Michelin, a French tire manufacturer, has said it will lay off more than a thousand workers. Swedish battery maker Northvolt has filed for bankruptcy. German carmaker Volkswagen has announced plant closures in its home country for the first time in its history. There is a broad consensus about the root causes of these problems. These include, but are not limited to, high energy prices, increasing competition from China and the US on critical technologies and strategic sectors, and weak domestic and external demand. While the European Commission has attempted to forge consensus on the solutions as well – most notably through Mario Draghi’s report – recipes to end Europe’s manufacturing crisis remain remarkably divergent. Should, for instance, Europe’s competition policy be modified to promote industrial champions? (Draghi says yes; senior Commission officials say no.) Should Europe issue more common debt to fund critical investments? (Draghi says yes; many Northern member states say no.) Should financial regulations be loosened to incentivise greater investment? (Draghi says yes; civil society and consumers NGOs say no.) Arguably, however, nowhere was such a lack of policy consensus more evident than over this past week, when the ETUC called for a Covid-19-style temporary ban – or “moratorium” – on all firings. | 
