{"id":896980,"date":"2026-04-16T02:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/896980\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T02:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:12:16","slug":"iran-crisis-shoves-europes-economic-woes-off-summit-agenda-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/896980\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran crisis shoves Europe\u2019s economic woes off summit agenda \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHeads of state and government are right to invest significant time in the unexpected geopolitical crises that have occurred over the course of the last weeks,\u201d said Siegfried Mure\u0219an, the lead lawmaker on the budget from the center-right European People\u2019s Party, from which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and most of the leaders also hail. \u201cHowever, I believe that as a union we should not spend all of our political time on a single topic at a time and then ignore other subjects which are important but maybe not necessarily urgent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaders have called on Brussels to help protect consumers and industry from high energy prices resulting from Iran\u2019s blockade of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, which has already lasted for six weeks. Oil and gas tankers have been left stranded in the strategic waterway, which links major exporters like Qatar and Saudi Arabia to the global market. Finland\u2019s President Alexander Stubb told POLITICO<\/a> last month that the conflict risks triggering a \u201cself-inflicted global recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

But leaders are wrestling with several different issues all at once and that\u2019s proving tricky. Governments need to make significant progress on the budget before the end of the year, Mure\u0219an said, warning \u201cthe Council delaying the process would mean that nothing will be ready \u2026 on January 1, 2028,\u201d disrupting planned payments.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lead lawmaker on the budget from the center-right European People\u2019s Party,\u00a0Siegfried Mure\u0219an, who said \u201cwe should not spend all of our political time on a single topic at a time.\u201d . | Thierry Monasse\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

On top of that, proposals to boost the EU\u2019s economic competitiveness in the face of stiff trade competition \u2014 demanded by capitals in response to sluggish growth \u2014 have fallen by the wayside, despite the Commission having done much of the work required to present a \u201croadmap\u201d setting out next steps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe roadmap is technically ready, but capitals aren\u2019t asking to speak about it \u2014 they want to talk about a thousand other things like energy and security,\u201d said one of the EU officials involved in the development of the plans, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly. \u201cThere are 10 topics on the table and we don\u2019t have time to talk about all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Challenging\u2019 geopolitics<\/p>\n

Competitiveness has been forced further up the agenda of the European Council over the past year by leaders concerned the EU is falling behind the U.S. and China, where energy prices for industry are several times lower<\/a>. It was also the focus of a February summit where they demanded concerted action from the Commission<\/a>. But it\u2019s no longer their priority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHeads of state and government are right to invest significant time in the unexpected geopolitical crises that have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[766,11783,1194,1395,6641,6178,8612,32,35,6643,2000,299,5187,769,1195,774,839,2661,11854,15857,811,84490,1201,657,49,1781,771,231032],"class_list":["post-896980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-alexander-stubb","tag-antonio-costa","tag-budget","tag-china","tag-competitiveness","tag-conflict","tag-cyprus","tag-donald-trump","tag-energy","tag-energy-prices","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-finland","tag-growth","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-oil","tag-peter-magyar","tag-pipelines","tag-security","tag-siegfried-muresan","tag-trade","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-viktor-orban","tag-war","tag-war-in-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116411967050380707","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}