{"id":20339,"date":"2026-04-10T17:56:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/20339\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T17:56:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:56:38","slug":"von-der-leyen-flips-the-blame-for-crippling-eu-economy-back-onto-national-leaders-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/20339\/","title":{"rendered":"Von der Leyen flips the blame for crippling EU economy back onto national leaders \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long frustration <\/p>\n

The frustration from the European Commission has been building for a long time.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s industry commissioner, St\u00e9phane S\u00e9journ\u00e9, has emerged as a key enforcer of closer internal market integration, coming up against skeptical national governments. <\/p>\n

In a letter sent to capitals late last year, seen by POLITICO, the French centrist politician warned the bloc\u2019s actions \u201cneed to be complemented with urgent and concrete actions by all Member States to champion the Single Market and, not least, to address specific barriers at national level.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of that drive, S\u00e9journ\u00e9 mapped out a list of the \u201cTerrible Ten\u201d<\/a> barriers harming the single market and called on capitals to give prior notice of legislation that could create new obstacles. In addition, he said, governments should \u201cname a high-level Single Market Sherpa\u201d who can act as a point person for the critical policy area in Brussels amid fears it too often falls through the gaps between ambassadors and ministers.<\/p>\n

\"\"The EU\u2019s industry commissioner, St\u00e9phane S\u00e9journ\u00e9, has emerged as a key enforcer of closer internal market integration, coming up against skeptical national governments. | Thierry Monasse\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“Discussions on the single market have lasted long enough,” S\u00e9journ\u00e9 told POLITICO ahead of Thursday’s talks. “The Commission has done its job identifying single market barriers, country by country, and sector by sector. But it is now for member states to take their responsibilities and actively remove those barriers. We will chase them as far, and fast, as we need to.”<\/p>\n

A second national diplomat said those pushing the Commission to act \u201chave a bit of a point\u201d because the bloc\u2019s executive has powers to strengthen the single market it is not using. The reason it isn\u2019t using them, though, the diplomat admitted, is because \u201cthey are afraid of political backlash if they touch some national holy cows, like Italian beaches<\/a> or French skiing instructors<\/a>,\u201d referring to two notorious cases of alleged protectionism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit like this Spider-Man meme \u2026 The Commission will continue to propose legislation as the main solution to any problem they identify. But I\u2019m not sure member states as a group are much better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long frustration The frustration from the European Commission has been building for a long time. The EU\u2019s industry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[5816,1426,2035,2419,250,3085,233,249,2041,2432,952,14937,16,5772,8533,2062,3443,1744,7663,1435,1745,17,403,14938],"class_list":{"0":"post-20339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ursula-von-der-leyen","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-buildings","10":"tag-capital-markets","11":"tag-chemicals","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-competitiveness","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-growth","17":"tag-industry","18":"tag-italy","19":"tag-labeling","20":"tag-markets","21":"tag-protectionism","22":"tag-regulatory","23":"tag-roads","24":"tag-shipping","25":"tag-single-market","26":"tag-stephane-sejourne","27":"tag-tanks","28":"tag-trade","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","31":"tag-waste"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116381704876319272","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}