So, Mr. Kamieth, ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, many thanks for inviting me to this European Industry Summit in this famous and well-known building. As your Prime Minister, my dear colleague from Belgium told me, this is the first place of European capitalism. So, this place, from the 16^th century, is a good place to meet today. So many thanks for being with us today, many thanks for this opportunity to speak and to give my view on what we are actually facing in the world. I can keep it very brief. We are living in a new geo-economic reality. But it is even more than that - it's a new geo-political reality. And once again in our history, we have entered a time of new great-power politics.

So where in this new world of great powers will Europe end up?

I could hear a little bit from those who were standing here and giving their views - from the EU Commission and from the French President. Let me give you my view and my perspective for this European policy.

Where in this new world of great powers will Europe end up? What determines the answer to this question?

Now, first and foremost: Our economic strength. In this world, in which we are living, we are faced with the fact that only an economically powerful Europe will be a sovereign Europe. And this is the reality we are living in.

In light of this insight, it is high time for Europe to act, to act swiftly and to act decisively: EU's growth gap with the US is widening. And China is catching up. Only three numbers: Over the past 20 years, China has grown by around 8 percent a year, the US by 2, and the EU in average only by 1 percent. So, we must close up this gap. We must close it now.

We've been there before in our history, and we've done it before as well in our history. From the ruins on the European continent of the Second World War to the turn of the Millennium we achieved it. Europe was able to nearly close the productivity gap with the US. We achieved this by uniting our strengths and making bold decisions. For example, with the internal market programme thirty years ago, we created the largest integrated market in the world - and we expanded it across most of our European continent.

Now, after a quarter of a century of gradual decline vis à vis our biggest competitors, it is again time to take bold decisions.

And this is not only my diagnosis: This is the inconvenient truth conveyed by Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta in their landmark reports. They have tasked us with an ambitious set of recommendations and now it's time to implement them.

Tomorrow, as you all know, in Alden Biesen, we will negotiate an ambitious European Competitiveness Agenda. This agenda shall put the words of Draghi and Letta into action.

My goal and the goal of my government is to take first decisions at the next European Council in March, on March 18^th or 19^th, and implement it by the end of this year.

And in my view, there are mainly 3 fields of action: the first one is cutting red tape, the second is strengthening our Single Market and the third is a free trade agenda for Europe.

Let me start with cutting red tape.

Over-regulation in this European Union, on our European continent, hampers our economic growth. It makes the EU less attractive for investment. Therefore, I call, we call for a true deregulation mindset. The mindset, ladies and gentlemen, is decisive, not the details. The mindset of the European Commission is decisive on that. We must deregulate every sector. And I call for a regulatory clean slate: minor corrections to laws are not sufficient. We need to systematically review the whole set of existing EU legislation.

We can and we will deliver - as we've just shown by significantly trimming back, at least trimming back, the CSTrippleD Regulation (CSDDD).

Yet we are still far too slow. China builds the world's largest solar farms within a few months. In the EU, it takes years just for the project to get approved.

Therefore, I propose to implement a fundamental principle in most permitting processes: Any project that is not treated within a few weeks or months will be regarded approved automatically. This is, ladies and gentlemen, what our companies and citizens expect of their administrations and their governments - and I believe it is their right.

The second field of action is the Single Market.

Economic integration between sovereign states in Europe is unprecedented. And yet: internal barriers remain extremely high. Two numbers: They act as a 45 percent tariff on goods and a 110 percent tariff on services. Numbers and figures from the Letta report. Meaning: goods and services cannot move as freely as they should within the European internal market. Also, trade within the Single Market has declined recently - I am sure you and your companies feel this development already every day.

We must change course now.

62 percent of business leaders consider the Single Market as fragmented. Indeed, we currently have 27 different national corporate regimes. Most of our larger companies have learned to cope with the complexity. But it definitely hinders growth in the most innovative sectors. Especially for them we need one single European set of business rules. Therefore, I strongly support the creation of what we call a 28th regime. And tomorrow when we are having our meeting as leaders I will advocate that we set ourselves the ambitious deadline to bring this idea to life by the end of the year.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me give some more precise examples of where we are lagging behind: Industry needs affordable energy prices. The best way to lower prices is to expand cross-border energy infrastructure, thus creating a genuine, well-connected internal energy market. We did that in Germany together with Denmark a couple of weeks ago when we created the first bilateral energy hub on the island of Bornholm, with interconnectors to both countries - to Denmark and to Germany - to create, at least between these two countries, what we are naming and calling a Single European Energy Market.

Second example: EU companies are falling behind in the AI race due to overly complex rules. We need to make those rules simpler. And we need to incentivise risk-taking. Companies for example should experiment much more with new technologies to build the business models of the future. This will lead to more digital innovation.

Last but not least: Our merger rules are outdated. Europe doesn't need European Champions, it needs Global Champions. Competition policy must take the new geo-political reality into account. We need rules that allow European companies to reach eye level with their US and Chinese peers.

Now, the third and last field of action which I would like to mention is our trade policy.

We all feel it - the world around us has become rough. Trade partners that we could rely on in the past are now building walls around them. However, in Europe growth and prosperity have never come from protectionism.

Just recently the EU Commission has concluded free-trade agreements with regions that are home to more than 1.7 billion people. Where others turn away from the world, we Europeans must step in. But we must get there much quicker. It should never again take us 26 years to get a trade deal - as it did with Mercosur. The world will not wait for us.

But, ladies and gentlemen, knowing what colleagues of mine are saying, our openness to free trade shall not be mistaken. We are neither naïve nor defenceless. We have instruments at hand to counter unfair practices. We will use them, if necessary. And you might remember what happened in that famous week of Davos. As long as the American government was on the way to implement new tariffs on European products, we were ready to act. And we had a spontaneous meeting of the 27 leaders of the entire European Union on short notice on Thursday night, and if the Americans had not withdrawn their thread of new tariffs by then, we would have implemented them. Again, we are not naïve and we are not defenceless.

And now for one of the highly disputed issues in addition to that, we should use European preference rules but in a smart way: only for critical, strategic sectors, and only as a last resort. And we need our trading partners, we must include them. This is why I believe "made in Europe" might be too narrow. Let us push for a "made with Europe" approach instead.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen - be it cutting red tape, be it strengthening our Single Market or diversifying our trade: Time to act is now!

And now that these institutions in the European Union are not as fast as they should be, we are fighting against a machinery which is working and working, and producing and producing new regulation. Me and my government, and together with others - and I know my colleague Bart De Wever is one of the keepers there -, we have decided to change that. It might last longer than we expect. But don't underestimate the power and the strength of this European Internal Market and let us not make ourselves smaller than we are. The world is looking at this European Union, and whenever you are travelling around the world, the European Union is seen much better and much more competitive from abroad than many in our business community are from within seeing this European Union. Let's be self-conscious, let's be bold and let's move on. We have already started to do.

Many thanks for your attention!