Orgalim joins EU Industry Days opening plenary

EU Industry Days is the European Commission’s flagship annual event on industry, and takes on additional importance this year, coming just a few weeks before the updated Industrial Strategy is due. It was opened by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Parliament President David Sassoli. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton led the plenary debate, asserting that "Europe's recovery provides us with huge opportunities to build a greener, more digital, more resilient economy."

Ms Rodriguez echoed Commissioner Breton's view that Europe is in a unique position to lead the green transformation and said that Europe's technology industries firmly support Europe's 2050 climate neutrality goals: "As our industries are enablers of the green transition in other sectors, when these sectors change, it generates new growth opportunities for Europe’s technology industries."

To achieve that ambition in what is a very tough competitive situation, she said the key challenge now is to scale up rapidly and reach economies of scale. The Covid crisis has contributed to a mood of wait and see, especially among SMEs, so that today there is a massive deployment gap when it comes to advanced manufacturing technologies, she pointed out. "We really need to focus to get to this tipping point where there is massive technology deployment by SMEs." To get there, she said, "SMEs especially need a very stable regulatory framework, that avoids putting too much burden on them and being too prescriptive." For example, when it comes to AI in industrial applications and machine learning, "we need to avoid putting a too tight legislative corset on these emerging technologies which need the time to mature."