Plan B for Europe A Complement Strategy for European Energy Efficiency, Industrial Resilience, and Economic Security
This report presents a comprehensive analysis of Europe’s industrial and energy landscape in the context of global competition, systemic dependencies, and political realities. It examines the structural weaknesses in current EU strategies—including the Draghi Report—highlighting overlooked risks, unrealistic assumptions, and the growing disconnect between political ambition and implementation capacity. Drawing on macroeconomic data, geopolitical developments, and sector-specific trends, the study identifies actionable insights across energy, infrastructure, trade, and industrial policy. The goal is to support decision-makers with grounded, data-driven perspectives and to offer a foundation for realistic, long-term solutions.
Introduction & Executive Summary
This report addresses the European Union’s realistic ability to respond to the growing internal and external challenges that define the current economic, energy, and socio-economic reality of Europe. Taking into account the Union’s existing strategies, the study proposes complementary recommendations in the form of a cautious, complementary pathway that can run alongside—and reinforce—current initiatives. The proposed “Plan B for Europe”—developed by GARI—prioritizes the sustainability, and gradual technological development of Europe’s industrial base by significantly increasing its energy efficiency, and implementing technological innovations at scale, rather than betting everything on the success of a leap-frog transformation. In the context of a rapidly changing global environment and domestic political shifts, the EU is encouraged to reassess its strategic priorities, strengthen its economic resilience, and identify more effective approaches to maintaining cohesion and competitiveness.
The EU should continue adapting to a global environment increasingly characterized by economic nationalism and fragmentation. A key recommendation and finding of this analysis are that it is in the vital interest of the Czech Republic—and the long-term sustainability of the EU as a whole—to exert maximum effort toward a prudent recalibration of the Union’s economic, energy, and industrial strategies, including the recommendations outlined in the so-called Draghi Report. Current strategies and ambitions do not fully correspond to present or future European and global realities, and their unadjusted implementation risks placing the EU in an economically and politically less sustainable position.
Our “Plan B for Europe” is cautious, pragmatic, and realistic in reconciling the key EU priorities that have been set since at least the Lisbon Strategy: competitiveness, sustainability, social cohesion, and the mitigation of external vulnerable dependencies. The analysis demonstrates that the way these pillars have been pursued over the past decade has sometimes been internally contradictory and has overlooked several important structural conditions, and contradictions. Without targeted reassessment, the result can be disappointment, unintended negative consequences, and increasing socio-political frustration.
The study concludes with a set of pragmatic recommendations whose immediate impact and feasibility of implementation are intended to complement and support the EU’s overarching ambitions, rather than replace them.
Plan B's key pillars.
Over the past two decades, the EU´s global competitiveness has structurally decreased, its external dependencies became more complex and more significant, while socio-political fragmentation within the EU has deepened. Rural and post-industrial areas are often excluded from the benefits of the EU policies, which results in interregional and intra-social disparities. Without a change in approach, the EU will continue to experience worsening socio-political pathologies, which ultimately threaten the very existence of a democratic European Union. The green transition, central to the EU’s ambitions, is riddled with contradictions: despite recognizing the issue, Europe continues to deepen its dependence on imports of technologies, raw materials, and goods essential for both industrial production and the green transition, while simultaneously increasing the vulnerability of its energy infrastructure and existing industrial base and deepening intra- and inter-regional socioeconomic divergences. The state of EU industry reflects years of deindustrialization and an economically short-sighted reliance on global supply and energy chains, weakening Europe’s ability to compete in high-tech industrial sectors.
The Draghi Report (European Competitiveness, 2024a, 2024b), while commendable for its urgency and critical assessment, ultimately preserves many of these shortcomings by - in practice and in results - ignoring key issues such as external dependencies, social inequality and deindustrialization. The report does address these issues individually, but in a way that is contradictory to other pillars of the report, which renders them very difficult to implement with success. Our findings suggest that the newest EU´s economic, and industrial strategies largely propose the same contradictory paths that have been advocated in previous decades, failing to account for the complexity of systemic interdependencies. While its recommendations on competitiveness, research and development, and deregulation are individually reasonable, they do not address the broader entropic costs, global developments, and social cohesion necessary for long-term resilience. Additionally, even if these recommendations were unexpectedly successful, their tangible structural impact would not materialize for at least a decade—a time horizon that Europe no longer has. The EU must adopt a crisis management mindset and focus on tools that can yield results within 2 to 4 years.
This analysis presents a pragmatic and cautious “Plan B for Europe”, acknowledging the EU’s structural constraints and offering a gradual, realistic pathway forward. The plan prioritizes energy efficiency in energy-intensive industries, a sector capable of delivering immediate and tangible results while addressing Europe’s fundamental vulnerabilities. It focuses on precision manufacturing and infrastructure modernization, advocating for a robust incentive plan and carefully selected regulations in energy efficiency, workforce reskilling, and investments in core and critical infrastructure. The goal of these measures is to balance external dependencies, competitiveness, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion in a way that is realistic, organic, and capable of delivering results within a sufficiently short timeframe—without succumbing to the pitfalls of overly ambitious but unattainable goals.
Key Pillars
Energy Efficiency: Targeting energy-intensive industries that have been overlooked in previous strategies, with the goal of achieving immediate gains, reducing emissions, and increasing competitiveness without exacerbating reliance on external supply chains.
Infrastructure Modernization: Addressing deficiencies in water distribution, waste management, district heating systems, and transmission networks to improve quality of life and economic resilience at both national and regional levels.
Incremental Innovation: Building on existing industrial strengths through workforce reskilling and localised research and development, ensuring stability throughout the transition.
Ultimately, this analysis calls for a paradigm shift in how the EU approaches its strategic challenges. Breaking the blind cycle of excessive promises and insufficient results requires a focus on resilience and pragmatism. Only by confronting its internal contradictions and adopting a realistic vision can Europe navigate the complexity and upheavals of the 21st century and secure its place in the unstable global (dis)order.
Plan B's key pillars.
GARI presents a pragmatic and cautious “Plan B for Europe”, acknowledging the EU’s structural constraints and offering a gradual, realistic pathway forward. The plan prioritizes energy efficiency in energy-intensive industries, a sector capable of delivering immediate and tangible results while addressing Europe’s fundamental vulnerabilities. It focuses on precision manufacturing and infrastructure modernization, advocating for a robust incentive plan and carefully selected regulations in energy efficiency, workforce reskilling, and investments in core and critical infrastructure. The goal of these measures is to balance external dependencies, competitiveness, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion in a way that is realistic, organic, and capable of delivering results within a sufficiently short timeframe—without succumbing to the pitfalls of overly ambitious but unattainable goals.
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