The ECR Party President Mateusz Morawiecki delivered a keynote speech at the 4th Poznań Economic Congress organised by the Instytut Poznański, which gathered political, academic, and business leaders to discuss Europe’s economic and institutional challenges.

The European Union was indeed a regulatory powerhouse — I use the past tense deliberately.

Is it still a regulatory powerhouse? Yes, but only internally. For countries outside the Union, it no longer holds that status. It has ceased to matter in that regard. On the contrary, many of its regulatory frameworks are now under heavy attack from its main competitors — not to say rivals or even adversaries — namely the United States, China, and other economic regions.

Thus, I put forward the following thesis: what used to be the European Union’s strength in regulatory terms is slowly becoming its weakness.

Deprived of real instruments of influence, the EU will increasingly struggle within the maze of its own regulations — rules that not only will not be respected externally, as we see with the Green Deal or digital-sector legislation, but will also tie the hands of European regulators and policymakers in the global race we are currently engaged in, and for which we should have been far better prepared. – said ECR Party President.