Competitive European chemicals industry is crucial - Commission

10 February 2011 11:15  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS)--It is crucial to keep a healthy and competitive European chemicals enterprise as it is a cornerstone for all manufacturing industry in the EU, European Commission vice president Antonio Tajani said on Thursday.

“It is crucial to keep a healthy and competitive chemicals industry in Europe, not only for the purpose of keeping the jobs and the market leadership for the chemical industry itself but also to keep the knowledge leadership for the whole industrial value chain,” Tajani said.

He was speaking at a conference in Brussels, Belgium, held as part of the International Year of Chemistry 2011.

The event was organised to report on the implementation of the EU High Level Group’s (HLG) recommendations, outlined in 2009, to improve the competitiveness of the European chemicals industry.

“These recommendations [by the HGL] are a roadmap for concrete and deliverable activities to strengthen the competitiveness of the European chemicals industry,” Tajani said.

The HLG’s first report on the success of the implementation of its recommendations was published last week.

Tajani said the report had been encouraging as it showed that many of the recommendations had already been implemented.

“I am particularly happy that there is a very wide range of actors involved [in the initiatives of the report], not only the Commission but also member states, authorities in the regions, and most importantly also the chemicals industry itself,” he said.

However, Tajani said that the European chemicals industry was facing new challenges due to the rise of competition from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations, and in the case of the petrochemical industry, also from new production facilities in the Middle East.

“Right now, the EU has a trade surplus with all its main trading partners, but we have to note that the overall share in chemicals production is going down. In order to maintain a strong position in a globalised world and to keep leadership in innovative solutions, we need to keep the momentum started by the High Level Group,” he said.

The HGL was set up by the Commission in 2007.

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By: Franco Capaldo
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