Dear reader, in a month, we will celebrate the first day of the year 2023. No need to be a diviner to know that compared to the year that is ending, the one that comes promises to be even more eventful. The war which hardens in Ukraine against a background of radicalization of a Russian army in difficulty, the energy crisis which will continue in Europe when no more molecules of additional gas are available on the world liquefied natural gas markets before 2026, inflation eating away at household purchasing power… let’s fasten our seatbelts!
In the economic field, it is on European industry that the main risk weighs. If the warning signs have been multiplying for three months, the announcement, at the beginning of November, by the Swedish manufacturer of electric battery cells Northvolt of a possible displacement of its project of giga-factory of cells in the north from Germany to the United States acts like an electric shock. What is at stake is no longer just the relocation of the “old” industry that runs on fossil fuels, but Europe’s ability to give substance to its dual project of sovereignty and transition to the low-carbon technology industry. .
Europe must now fight on two fronts. In the East, China on which it depends massively in the solar industry or the electric vehicle. This dependence is not an accident, but the fruit of a policy patiently constructed by Beijing. The Chinese geopolitics of the transition leaves no room for the interdependencies that have characterized the globalization of the past three decades. China’s objective is to build multiple asymmetrical dependencies, like those of the European Union for most low-carbon technologies. Beijing does not have 2050 but 2049 in its sights: it wants to celebrate the centenary of the People’s Republic by occupying first place on the podium of transition technologies.
Collateral damage for Washington
In the West, Europe must now reckon with an America determined not only to block the way to the rise of China, its “systemic rival”, but even more to reinstall all the value chains of the new industry. The recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act adds to already attractive energy prices – thanks to shale gas, energy costs are half as expensive here as elsewhere – a myriad of subsidies for products made on American soil. From this perspective, the relocation of European industry is, seen from Washington, only collateral damage in the new cold war that the United States is launching against China.
“Choose your camp comrade !” For the time being, Europe refuses: it is Bruno Lemaire who accuses the United States of practicing Chinese-style protectionism, preparing in a martial tone for the visit to Washington of the President of the Republic, who is promoting a “Buy European Act”; it is the same Emmanuel Macron who, in front of the leaders of the Asian countries, calls to refuse the logic of the two blocks, in the wake of the G20 in Bali. On the German side, it is the Minister of the Economy, Robert Habeck, who is calling for “decisive” action by the European Union, while his country is trying to find a way between reaffirming the close economic and commercial link with the China during the recent trip by Olaf Scholz to Beijing and the recent ban on the sale of two German factories to Chinese industrialists.
Yes, Robert Habeck: “An open market economy does not mean a naive market economy.” Finally, Germany is rediscovering Realpolitik and abandoning one by one its dogmas in terms of defence, trade and energy! We also hope that it will go to the end of its aggiornamento by also attacking its anti-nuclear dogma so that in 2049 it too will celebrate the centenary of the Federal Republic with an industry that remains powerful.
Beyond that, it is all of Europe which, to preserve its values and its place in the world, must revisit its methodological credo and think against itself in terms of competition, protection and defence. “Everything has to change so that nothing changes”: after all, since 2023 will also mark the sixtieth anniversary of the magnificent Cheetah of Visconti, let us make Lampedusa’s words our own and assume to be “the cheetahs, the lions”, if really “after us will come the jackals and the hyenas”, with whom we will have to live well.