On Thursday 19 June, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium held a new lunch-debate in the framework of its ‘Business Circle’ platform, in which the Head of Cabinet of Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President for Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition of the European Commission, Miguel Gil Tertre, spoke on ‘Towards a more competitive and sustainable Europe: Regulatory modernization for businesses and the Green Deal’.

After the welcome cocktail, the President of the Chamber, Pablo López-Álvarez, opened the lunch by briefly reviewing the biography of Gil Tertre, one of the key contributors to the Draghi report and one of the youngest cabinet chiefs in the current college of Commissioners.

Inmaculada Rodríguez-Piñero, Senior Advisor at EPPA, the company sponsoring the event, then spoke. Rodríguez-Piñero highlighted the importance of international alliances at a time of geopolitical instability such as the present. She also advocated regulatory simplification to make the European Union a more competitive player on the global stage.

Stability as a key to competitiveness

Gil Tertre began his presentation by highlighting the great progress that the EU has made in terms of ecological transition, “which is now factual”.

In addition, he stressed that maintaining financial stability will be key in the coming years when it comes to guaranteeing European competitiveness, and that ‘it will depend on the ability of European institutions to adapt to changes’. In this sense, he said that the predictability of financial policies is a way of attracting investment.

The presentation was followed by an extensive question and answer session in which topics such as regulatory simplification and competitiveness in decarbonised industries were raised.