At a meeting at Alden Biesen, Belgium on Thursday, EU leaders discussed ways to increase Europe's competitiveness.

According to Estonian Minister of Finance Jürgen Ligi (Reform), most of the issues related to competitiveness ought to be addressed at the national level. In his view, the EU is responsible for a number of overly strict regulations that need to be relaxed.

"In reality, the focus should be on labor productivity, which is where Europe is quickly falling behind, primarily because people are working less. Do we want to start working more? That is a separate question, but people in the U.S. work much more and are pulling ahead," Ligi said.

There is also serious talk about the need to reduce bureaucracy.

"We have actually made over 200 specific proposals to the European Commission on how to reduce all kinds of reporting," said Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs Erkki Keldo (Reform).

"We are also working very hard domestically to make the application process for various innovation grants faster and easier. On the other hand, reporting would be more understandable and would not create a lot of bureaucracy and administration," Keldo added.

Isamaa say high energy prices in Europe are driving industry away and cannot be controlled without changing the current emissions trading system and repealing ETS2.

"We need to open up the existing ETS (Emissions Trading System) and fundamentally reforming it so that speculative trading in emissions, which is currently what happens, is eliminated and replaced. Estonian employers have previously proposed a model to replace it with a fixed emissions trading fee, which is low and predictable," said Isamaa Chair Urmas Reinsalu.

The Estonian government maintains the position that Europe should not make concessions when it comes to environmental protection, though changes are necessary to make emissions prices more predictable.

"How can we ensure that there is no speculation and that it is clear that the price will not rise so high that it begins to undermine the competitiveness of our manufacturing industry?" asked Keldo.

"I would be sad if the populists here were to get their way, because in reality, it makes no sense for industry to compete with us in terms of energy consumption or environmental pollution. In some areas, we are not competing. We should consider a smarter and cleaner economy to be our specialty," said Ligi.

Social Democratic Party (SDE) leader Lauri Läänemets believes that in addition to energy and strategic reserves, AI – a field in which China and America have already overtaken Europe – is also crucial for the EU's competitiveness.

"It is very likely that artificial intelligence will play a major role in the global economy. The issue for Europe is that it needs to invest far more in this area, and we have done less than that. In terms of technological development, we have actually fallen too far behind the U.S.," said Läänemets.

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