European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has released the political guidelines laying out her policy program for the next five years should she be reappointed for a second term.
The 30-page political program, published just before von der Leyen sets out her pitch to Members of the European Parliament, includes promises to create a new fund to boost European industry, a loosening of competition rules to allow more deals among firms, the creation of a defense commissioner, and a tripling of the number of border guards in the bloc.
Von der Leyen needs the backing of 361 MEPs to secure a second term as head of the EU’s executive and the program is an attempt to answer demands from very different political groupings.
The business-friendly program includes setting up a European Fund for Competitiveness. “This investment capacity will invest in strategic technologies – from AI to space, clean tech to biotech – to ensure that we develop strategic technologies and manufacture them here in Europe,” the document says.
The center-right president is heeding calls from businesses and countries such as France and Germany to loosen EU regulators’ control over firms’ deals to help “scaling up.” She also wants to change public procurement rules to give preference “to European products in public procurement for certain strategic sectors.”
In a nod to the lawmakers in Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, the program addresses immigration. “We will make the EU the most advanced travel destination in the world, with a fully functional European digital border management,” the document says, stressing that “there will be no impunity for smugglers and people traffickers.”
And in a bid to tackle the bloc-wide housing crisis, von der Leyen proposes the creation of a first-ever Commissioner for Housing and the launch of an EU-wide affordable housing plan.
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