BusinessEurope chief urges EU to complete single market to stay competitive
The new president of BusinessEurope has warned that failing to dismantle internal trade barriers will cost the continent billions and undermine political stability.
Maciej Witucki has taken the helm of BusinessEurope with a stark warning for policymakers. He argues the bloc must stop searching for new solutions and instead rapidly execute existing plans to complete the single market. “Don't look for any silver bullets, we already have plans — just implement them,” he said, warning that failure to act means “the political world in Europe will suffer.”
For companies and investors, Witucki’s priority is clear. He views the dismantling of cross-border friction as the continent’s most powerful economic engine. “The real single market is a SpaceX of Europe, it's a starship of Europe because if we really keep those barriers, we have billions of euros which are being lost, [the equivalent] of 50%,” he said.
These losses stem from outdated regulations. Witucki pointed to “defensive measures which have been built 20 years ago, 30 years ago for the services which are no more relevant in many cases.” Removing them is presented as the only way for the continent to challenge global superpowers.
Beyond trade, Witucki highlighted energy as the other major obstacle for European industry. While geopolitical shocks have accelerated the shift away from oil and gas, he stressed that decarbonisation cannot come at the cost of industrial collapse. “We will not save it if we have no industries, no revenues, no taxes to pay for it,” he noted.
Europe’s deficit is not in talent, according to Witucki, but in scale and capital allocation. He rejected the notion that the continent lacks innovators, stating: “In Europe, we have Elon Musks and we have Mark Zuckerberg's. We just don't have the SpaceX's and the Facebook's yet.” He argued that unlocking this potential requires finalising the banking union and the investments and savings union.
A Polish blueprint
Witucki pointed to Poland’s recent economic performance as evidence that rapid reform is possible. The country more than doubled its GDP over the last decade and posted roughly 3% growth in 2024, driven by consumption and a post-pandemic investment boom.
Central to this success was aggressive deregulation. Witucki highlighted a recent initiative where the Polish prime minister and a leading businessman publicly met monthly to track regulatory simplification. “160 bills have been passed within three, four months from the beginning of this initiative,” he observed.
For the broader EU, the implication is that the building blocks for a competitive economy already exist. “I go back to the European situation, we have all the necessary resources, the capital one, the human ones, it's just a question of how we put them together,” Witucki concluded.
