Hungarian minister worries about the EU’s competitiveness

The European Union today lags behind other global players in terms of world economic competitiveness, János Bóka, the minister for European Union affairs, said on Friday.

Summarising an article he wrote in Eurázsia magazine, Bóka said in a post on Facebook that the EU faced structural problems, explaining that whereas in the past it had guaranteed access to cheap energy and raw materials, today the global market and the connectivity between Western and Eastern technologies were under threat.

Also, the “instinct” of European institutions, particularly the European Commission, to “overregulate” was leading to European industry policy becoming a “planned economy”, the minister said.

Thirdly, he argued that the central and eastern European region, “which in the past decade has been the fastest-growing region”, was being “systematically held back” rather than being used as Europe’s engine of growth.

Hungarian government: direct conflict between the major economic players could be avoided