A.SPIRE at the third edition of the European Industry Summit

There is no resilient, safe, or strong Europe without a strong industry!

The third edition of the European Industry Summit, on 11 February 2026, gathered 600 attendees. The Summit fostered dialogue between industry representatives, the President of the European Commission, Ms Ursula von der Leyen and European heads of state and prime ministers.

A.SPIRE’s Executive Director, Ms Angels Orduña and President, Mr Vedran Kujundzic (DOMO Chemicals), were present at the Summit, as well as representatives from A.SPIRE’s sectors.

The reports on European competitiveness by former Italian Prime Ministers, Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, were central to discussions. A.SPIRE welcomes the public sector's acknowledgement that high energy prices and difficulties in accessing critical materials are generating European deindustrialisation rather than decarbonisation.

Furthermore, we welcome a number of the proposals put forward by the public sector:

• Remove internal barriers to the EU Single Market and create a single and well-connected EU energy market, while reducing red tape, streamlining and simplifying regulation.

62% of business leaders consider the European Single Market to be fragmented. This fragmentation hinders industrial innovation.

Furthermore, there is an urgent need to provide low-carbon, affordable energy in Europe and to build an integrated energy grid that uses the best available energy sources from across the EU (a proposal that A.SPIRE included in P4Planet’s SRIA 2050).

The process industry also considers that Europe needs to regulate energy prices to create a fair level playing field for competition and reignite investments in innovation.

• Strengthen European preference in our markets and ensure imported products meet the same regulatory requirements as those applied to European products.
• Accelerate the capital market to boost investments in innovation.

Europe is lagging behind on investments in innovation compared with competitors such as China and the USA. Europe needs to ramp up investments in the next five years to compete globally.

The 2026 European Industrial Summit delivered a clear message from the industry: there is no European future and prosperity without a strong European industry. We are at a historic tipping point and need to focus on what matters: restoring our competitiveness.

Our policymakers need to accelerate action in 2026. French President Emmanuel Macron signalled that the EU is good at acting quickly when Member States feel they are facing a symmetric shock. We consider deindustrialisation to be a symmetric shock and that urgent action is needed to unlock the competitiveness of our industries and reignite industrial innovation investments.

A.SPIRE welcomes the dialogue fostered by the Summit and the announcement made at Alden Biesen on 12 February 2026, that the European Commission will present in March a plan to deepen the European Union’s Single Market (more information here).

We will follow these developments closely and analyse how they will affect the innovation routes of our sectors.