Europees bedrijfsleven wil dat de EU zich ontwikkelt tot een politieke unie (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - What European business needs in the long term is "political union" in the EU, according to the head of Eurochambres - an association representing over 17 million businesses in Europe.

Austrian Christoph Leitl told the EUobserver in an interview, "a free-trade zone is good for business but business in the long run needs political union. You can't have a stable currency without a political power behind it. And therefore we need it".

"If Britain wants to stop the train, then we should let them get out at the next station and take the slow train", he added.

Like most business leaders, Mr Leitl bemoans the current slow rate of growth in the EU but pleads for European solutions to European problems - rather than a return to national interests, as he puts it.

"There is a danger that we will fall back to national interests when what we need is the opposite. We need a European strategy, a European policy", says Dr Leitl.

"Let's face off the challenge of the US and Asia and we can win this competition".

EU has failed business

Despite his enthusiasm for the European project, he cannot hide his disappointment with Brussels - a disappointment he says is shared by many of his 17 million members.

Europe has "failed" business, he believes with constant bickering over the rules that underpin the euro and a continued lack of progress on its economic goal to be the most competitive economy in the world by 2010.

"I see that there is a lot of frustration combined with fear for the future", he says. "Business is frustrated by the economic situation - three or four years of slow growth. People are not feeling happy".

And at least some of the blame must be attached to the European Commission, which he chides for "a serious lack of professionalism and management".

"We have wonderful goals, but without management, we will get nowhere", he warns.

Is Europe in the Premier league

The next five years will be critical to ensure that the EU remains a global economic force, believes the Austrian.

"But the next five years, when we elect a new commission and a new Parliament, will be very crucial. This is when we decide whether Europe is in the first league or in the second with Latin America and probably Oceania".

Furthermore, the EU needs a Commission President who has uppermost in his or her mind the EU's economy and its economic goals. The EU needs someone like Jacques Delors [Commission President from 1985-1994], he says, who was very quiet, but who could bring people together, who could co-ordinate.

Lisbon is dead

But nothing can help the EU in its main economic goal, which is to become "the most competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010" - the so-called Lisbon goals.

"We have to say that Europe has failed to close the gap between the US and to become the most competitive area in the world by 2010 is no longer possible", he said.

What is needed, he says, is a bottom-up approach. Rather than the Lisbon strategy being directed from Brussels at EU level, it needs to be ingrained in European society from regional level, through national level up to EU-wide level, with the Commission co-ordinating the entire strategy.

Then business could get the boost from the EU that it so desperately needs.