Estonian president urges EU to think about competitiveness

11.03.2008

The president said current thinking in the EU is not a cause for optimism as the alliance has not been able to fulfill its own program for developing innovation and competitiveness. As a second reason, he named the deepening protectionism of the EU.

"The emphasis my country placed on information technology paid off, allowed it to be more competitive. But this is not enough. More generally, Estonia as well as the rest of Europe is falling behind in innovation, research and development," Ilves said in Strasbourg, speaking in Estonian.

In his words, innovations at present come first and foremost from the United States, which itself depends on draining brains from Europe as well as from India and China to maintain its high level of competitiveness.

"We are averse to immigration, our children increasingly choose not to study math, science and engineering, and we are choosing to close ourselves off from competition within the EU in one of the most competitive sectors of the world economy: services," Ilves said.

Competition or its lack within the EU has security implications as well, he pointed out.

"Given the role of energy in our lives, it is understandable that many countries of the Union want to shield their companies from competition and are opposed to the liberalization of the energy market. (...) But today, Europe's single largest source of energy is a country that has proclaimed itself 'energy superpower', and states on its foreign ministry home page that energy is a foreign policy tool," Ilves said referring to Russia.

Speaking about the lagging competitiveness of Europe, Ilves observed that Koreans and Japanese enjoy rates of internetization far greater than most of Europe and Asia and the United States are producing far more engineers and scientists.

"All of this will lead to a gradual decline of Europe and European competitiveness in a globalized economy unless, of course, we do something about it," he said. "But this is not enough. We need more courage, we need more of a vision and an understanding of where we and the world will be in 20 or 25 years. When even the economic powerhouse that is Germany today will be dwarfed by India and China."

Ilves said he hopes very much that in the upcoming European Parliament elections parties will compete not on the basis of maintaining today's status quo but on their visions of the future. In his words, the European Parliament deals well with the problems that fit into four or five year cycles.

"But our challenges in our Union today, from energy to the environment, from competitiveness to enlargement, from common foreign policy to migration, are all strategic issues requiring courage and boldness of action with a far longer time span than two or three sets of elections," he said.

Tallinn newsroom, +372 610 8849, sise@bns.ee