This announcement is first and foremost horrific for the men and women that are at risk of loosing their jobs for reasons on which they have no control. To give an idea of the scale of what the European Commission leadership is announcing, Energy-Intensive industries currently employ directly 2.6 million workers in the EU 27. In the same way, in 2025 the EU has lost ca. 200k manufacturing jobs. If the forecast of the Commission is right, about half of the existing jobs in the EU EIIs could vanish and what is ahead of us represents 6 times the job losses experienced in the industry last year. It is not a wave of restructurings which is announced, it is a genuine social tsunami. Europe can’t afford such a social disaster. Massive restructurings should be avoided by all means.

Secondly, the tsunami is not taking place in calm waters but in a mix of compounding storms. The geopolitical crisis we are in – largely triggered by the bunch of psychotic autocrats in power nowadays – is driving energy prices upwards, which is mechanically fueling inflation as reminded in the EU Economic Spring forecasts. The intensification of extreme weather events that impact agriculture globally exacerbates inflation pressure which supports inflation in the EU but leads to an existential food crisis in many poor countries. In addition, many European countries are implementing policies that dramatically impact public services and the welfare system, exposing workers losing their jobs and their families to a risk of falling into poverty. Europe can’t accept workers falling into precariousness or poverty because of geopolitical developments. SURE 2.0 has demonstrated it can be an efficient emergency instrument.

Thirdly, these job losses are the unacceptable symptom of an industrial collapse that will make the EU unable to reach its main policy objectives. Losing more than one million of industrial jobs means losing collective knowledge and know-how built by decades if not centuries of industrial activities. (Re)Building Europe’s strategic autonomy or bolstering “Made in Europe” as claimed in recent flagship policy initiatives such as the “Industrial Accelerator Act” looks impossible if Europe is just watching the disruption of its foundation industries that are at the source of all industrial supply chains. The ongoing wars as well as the many attempts to weaponize dependencies remind us that only betting on a global relocation of industrial activities would be a catastrophic gamble for the whole Europe.

Fourthly, the contrast between the diagnosis and the proposed therapeutic is particularly striking. Of course, skills policies matter and it must be a fundamental pillar of the EU industrial policy, but if the core of the problem comes from our deadly dependence on imported fossil fuels, training or retraining people will not make any difference in the short term. Europe must act quickly and massively to cushion the short term consequences of the situation and must act as massively to accelerate its energy transition and make our industries and societies much less exposed to what happens to the ships and pipelines that transport fossil energy to Europe. 

By accelerating Europe's energy transition many new jobs will be created and the dependency on imported fossil fuels will be reduced – thereby releasing room for the investments needed. But, to succeed with the transition, it is important that skills policies are targeted at these new jobs.

In the same way, what is announced in terms of additional fiscal flexibility allowed to member states to cope with the energy crisis goes in the right direction but is far away from what public authorities should do to steer Europe out of the storm. Exceptional circumstances require exceptional solutions and in addition to the reactivation of the general escape clause, the EU must explore ways to reiterate the Next Generation EU model that helped to collectively manage the COVID 19 social and economic consequences. The same reasoning must apply to the EU budget. In addition to the resource adequacy debate, mainstreaming social conditionalities and European content requirements across the whole budget must ensure that scarce public money generates maximum co-benefits for Europeans.