Europur calls for strong European chemical industry in light of Antwerp Declaration dissent

Europur, the European trade body for flexible PU foam, issued a stark warning on its LinkedIn page today:

“Chemistry is the mother of all industries, or 'chemistry is the central science' as twice Nobel-prize holder Linus Pauling put it. This is certainly true for #polyurethanes and their supply chain. Without a strong European chemical industry, there is no strong European PU industry. And without PU industry a lot of supply chains would have a hard time making products Europeans use in their daily lives, including white goods, automobiles, upholstered furniture, bedding or building insulation, just to name a few.

“This week leaders of Europe's industry met in Antwerp as a follow-up of the Antwerp Declaration which we subscribed to, urging political leaders for a proper industrial policy aimed notably at securing the future of the chemical industry.

“We truly are at a crossroads. We can keep pretending nothing happened in the world over the past couple of years and just carry on with our own priorities in isolation. Or we can acknowledge that the world has changed and adapt to it, reviewing priorities and taking measures to ensure the chemical industry and our supply chain has a future in Europe. One thing is sure however, if we do not have a strong industry, we will not be able to secure our wellbeing nor our independence. Or in the recent words of the Canadian Prime Minister, we'll not be at the table but on the menu.”

Not pulling any punches, Michel Baumgartner, Secretary General of Europe and EuroMoulders, took to LinkedIn to counter an critical article published by online news source Politico.

Baumgartner wrote: “Personal view: When over 600 leaders of European industry publicly sounding the alarm in Antwerp are now castigated as “plotting”; when our strategic industries are leaving Europe in droves; when the very idea of promoting “Made in Europe” in public procurement is unthinkable to the EU’s largest Member State—a country that closed its nuclear power plants, holds the record for electricity prices, and now relies on (nuclear electricity) imports from France; when the answer to everything is more debt (deferred taxation); when we issue new regulations as if there were no tomorrow, only to postpone or revise them later because they were drafted in haste; when we are totally unable to control our imports… one cannot help but think that Europe’s industrial revival is little more than empty rhetoric for today’s headlines, or at best a very steep uphill path.

“So no, industry is not 'plotting', it is telling things as they are. It doesn't want to move to other shores but is in many instances forced to. And if we cannot even listen to the aligned message of the overwhelming majority of our industrial representatives without castigating it, then we really need to get used to the idea of becoming poorer, relying ever more on goods made elsewhere, and probably no longer being able to finance our social models.”

Photo by Carl Gruner on Unsplash

Europur