The EU must integrate its financial, energy and telecommunications markets or face losing its “economic security” and falling further behind the US and China, the author of a new report has warned. Enrico Letta, the former Italian prime minister tasked by European leaders to assess the state of the EU’s underperforming single market, told the Financial Times that further European integration was a matter of survival in the global economy. “The problem is that in this new world, we are too small.
Letta’s intervention comes as Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, castigated Europe for “monumental mistakes” in energy policy that have caused it to fall behind China and the US, and called for the EU to develop a “new industrial master plan” to recover. The funding needs for greening Europe’s economy are estimated at €500bn a year, according to former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi — who is drafting a separate report on how to improve Europe’s competitiveness.