“Europe must take its destiny into its own hands”
Yvan Verougstraete believes that Europe’s globalization strategy is not bearing fruit. “We have long taken advantage of China to have goods delivered, we have long taken advantage of the Americans for our defense and we have taken advantage of the Russians for our energy”he explains, “but we now see that this strategy does not work. We must do without the Russians for our energy, we will have to reindustrialize Europe to be less dependent on China and we must take our defense destiny more largely into our own hands.”
Trump president, Europe in suspense: “We are heading towards difficult years because it is completely unpredictable”
The founder of Medi-Market nevertheless affirms that this last point will not be obvious because “the United States invested 100 billion euros in Ukraine’s defense, which only allowed it to defend itself and resist.” But for Yvan Verougstraete, the EU has a responsibility towards Ukraine and must not let Donald Trump decide the fate of the Ukrainians alone.
“Moving from free trade to fair trade”
On the commercial level, the election of Donald Trump “could be a disaster for Europeans” because the American president wants to increase customs taxes for products imported into the United States. To counter this phenomenon, Yvan Verougstraete believes that the European Union must “play the competitive game adequately” and stop imposing restrictive rules on its own commercial actors. “We must move from free trade to fair trade.”
For the MEP, the EU must put in place customs taxes “to correct dumping, that is to say the state aid which is granted by our competitors.” He also believes that Europeans must “impose the same environmental standards” on products imported into Europe.
The re-election of Donald Trump, a disaster for the climate? “It could be a very hard blow”
The hearing of the commissioners by the European Parliament? “A very good system”
Finally, Yvan Verougstraete returned to the approval of the appointment of Hadja Lahbib to the post of European Commissioner by the EU Parliament. The vice-president of the Engagés thinks that it is a “very good system which could also be put in place in Belgium for our ministers. This would be the way for them, before being confirmed in their new function, to have to be accountable to the representatives of the people to show their skills and their program..”
