EU leaders will push a “Buy European” policy to protect “strategic sectors” of European industry, they announced at an “informal” summit February 12-13 on how to secure the continent’s future.

The Guardian reports that the summit, at Alden Biesen Castle in Bilzen, Belgium, saw the EU’s 27 leaders gather for a brainstorming session on how Europe could regain its economic competitiveness relative to the U.S. and China.

Before the summit, Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, said Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands were facing “an existential crisis” because of factory closures and declining investment, a result of high energy costs, regulations and “Chinese dumping” – the unfair  subsidization of goods that hobbles the competitive advantage of European companies.

“We all know we must change course,” he said. “Yet it sometimes feels as if we are still standing on the bridge of the ship, staring at the horizon, without touching the helm.”

After the summit, the European Council president António Costa said sectors such as defense, space, clean tech, quantum, artificial intelligence and payment systems required protection. 

Speaking alongside him the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen promised an action plan to boost Europe’s single market by March, including further “simplification,” of regulations at EU and national level; a new regime of company law to boost startups known as EU Inc, as well as plans to integrate Europe’s fragmented capital markets and cut energy prices. “The pressure and the sense of urgency is enormous, and that can move mountains,” she said.

The Guardian says the question of Europe’s declining competitiveness has long troubled the EU but gained new urgency when painful vulnerabilities were revealed by the sudden loss of Russian gas in 2022, Donald Trump’s trade wars, and China’s pursuit of economic dominance through huge state subsidies.

Meanwhile, on February 13, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of a defining moment in relations between the U.S. and Europe, on his way to give a major speech at the Munich Security Conference.

"We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it's going to require all of us to sort of re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be," Rubio said.