[ad_1]
The European Fee is planning to unveil a proposal early subsequent 12 months for brand new powers that will enable Brussels to safe provides throughout a disaster, in line with an inner message seen by POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook.
Europe has encountered critical vulnerabilities in its provide chains over the previous 12 months on quite a lot of fronts. The EU was caught flat-footed within the coronavirus vaccination race and needed to take contentious measures to restrict exports and maintain jabs within the bloc. That disaster solely compounded current worries about dependence on Asia for important imports starting from face masks to microchips.
Specifically, the European Union worries that 98 p.c of the uncommon earth metals that it wants in a bunch of business functions come from China. A scarcity of magnesium from China has additionally change into a significant headache for producers of automobiles, planes and electronics.
In a New 12 months’s message to his employees, Inner Market Commissioner Thierry Breton stated Brussels would current the brand new legislation within the “spring.”
The legislation will encompass a “toolbox of measures that may be activated to make sure safety of provide throughout a disaster,” Breton wrote, which may imply export controls and powers for the EU to request data from corporations on manufacturing, stockpiles and their provide chains.
It could additionally embody “mid-to long-term measures … to handle structural strategic dependencies, diversify sources of provide and enhance EU industrial capacities.” Officers say this may embody measures geared toward decreasing the EU’s dependence on China.
Nonetheless, Europe’s provide chain woes in the course of the pandemic had inner in addition to exterior causes, partially triggered by border restrictions and bans on medical tools exports inside the bloc. France seized masks shipments transferring throughout the EU that handed by its territory, and Germany imposed unilateral export bans. France maintained its nationwide export restriction on masks even after the EU had imposed one for the complete bloc.
European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen first hinted on the new legislation in a speech earlier this 12 months, when she stated Brussels was “engaged on a Single Market Emergency Instrument” to “make sure the free motion of products, providers and other people, with larger transparency and coordination … [and] fast-track choices, each time a important scenario emerges.”
[ad_2]
Source link