Go big or go home

When it comes to industrial policy, the EU remains big in ambition but meager in substance. This is not surprising. With its renewed strategy, the EU Commission aims to follow the international trend towards more active industrial policy. However, it has to do so within a framework that was designed to discourage – indeed even prevent – the investment-centered policies at the heart of the current discussion. For the EU’s industrial strategy to really have teeth, it needs new financial instruments, a stronger macroeconomic focus on growth and employment and better governance.