France, Germany call for new EU trade tools to protect European industry
Macron and Merz urge bloc to diversify supply chains, address market distortions
PARIS, France (MNTV) – France and Germany called Monday for new European Union trade instruments, arguing that the bloc’s existing measures are no longer sufficient to address challenges facing its trade system.
In a joint letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the EU as facing “unprecedented challenges.”
They said the rules-based trade system was “massively affected” by the “weaponization of trade,” market-distorting practices and global macroeconomic imbalances.
“All this undermines the level playing field for our companies, our position as a sovereign key industrial producer and our ability to innovate, leading to increased dependencies and geoeconomic risks,” the letter said.
“For all these reasons, we need urgent action to address these threats, to diversify and to derisk,” it added.
Macron and Merz welcomed efforts to strengthen the EU’s resilience and competitiveness and called for the full use of the bloc’s existing trade defense measures.
“But this does not suffice anymore,” they said, calling for a “comprehensive framework” to complement the existing toolbox with new legal instruments “in a lean and non-bureaucratic way.”
The first proposed instrument would aim to reduce European dependencies, resolve existing supply-chain concentration and prevent emerging concentration risks.
A second instrument would address cases in which third countries “deliberately seek to undermine the restoration of a level playing field and fair market conditions by political or economic means.”
Such actions could result in what the letter described as “severe and systematic distortions” of the EU’s internal market.
The proposed mechanism would give the European Commission the ability to take “decisive and systemic reaction,” including through “powerful measures, up to an immediate cut-off from the internal market if needed.”
“This instrument has to be country-agnostic,” the letter said.
Macron and Merz also pointed to “significant non-tariff barriers” facing EU exporters.
They also highlighted the presence in the EU market of products with “record levels of non-compliance to EU regulations,” including consumer safety rules.
They cited “misalignment and under-evaluation of real exchange rates” as contributing to price competitiveness advantages over European companies and “growing imbalances with the EU.”
The letter also called for strengthening the European industrial base through “industrial policy, simplification as well as public and private investment.”
The proposals follow discussions at the June European Council and the Franco-German Council of Ministers in July.
Macron and Merz said their ideas had been detailed in an accompanying Franco-German non-paper.
They said they looked forward to advancing discussions at the European Council meeting in October.
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