Debate contributions by Fulvio MARTUSCIELLO

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, as pointed out in your report and in that of Mario Draghi, a solid European single market is essential for the competitiveness of businesses, because it can stimulate economic growth and innovation, guaranteeing market access and eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy. However, Europe needs a strong industrial strategy for technologies and value chains that promotes competitiveness, sustainability and innovation. This strategy must develop a coherent vision, prioritising a regulatory framework, with science-based policies and in-depth impact assessments, providing businesses with the stability they need. From this point of view, we consider the mission letters on the creation of a truly competitive circular economy to be very positive. In recent decades, European companies have invested billions of euros in cutting-edge technologies, have generated enormous progress ineco-design of products, in consumer safety and in the recycling industry, where Italy and Europe hold positions of leadership worldwide, both in terms of industrial innovation and environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, the overregulation of recent years has generated enormous uncertainty, pushing entire industrial sectors to postpone their investments, compromising the overall growth objectives, with a waste of time and resources. In this mandate it will therefore be necessary to avoid at all costs producing further legislative initiatives motivated by falsely environmentalist logics and not based on scientific evidence, which risk penalizing European companies. It will be imperative to ensure compliance with European standards by third countries, ensuring standards that reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and strengthen the competitiveness of European industry and economies to meet the challenges of global competition from China and the United States.