While CEOs were voicing their concerns to the Commission president, a few floors below, Teresa Ribera, commissioner for a clean industrial transition, was unveiling the bloc’s 2040 climate targets.
Von der Leyen’s European People’s Party is criticized for diluting the EU’s environmental agenda to maintain competitiveness, which seemed to satisfy the German visitors.
The Commission president was “listening very closely to the details,” said Hendrik Wüst, the minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, who was with the CEOs. “We have brought up several good topics to president von der Leyen, who will also support competitiveness,” he added. “We received quite a strong signal from her.”
Wüst is a member of von der Leyen’s party in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union within the European People’s Party group.
Industry representatives from other EU countries haven’t been as fortunate. Confindustria, the Italian business confederation, stated that Italian industry leaders never receive such facetime with the president.
However, the Germans showcased their ease of access. Markus Steilemann, CEO of chemicals company Covestro, told POLITICO this wasn’t his first meeting with the Commission’s top official. There have been “numerous occasions,” he said, due to his “numerous accountabilities within the European chemical industry, within the German chemical industry, but also as a CEO.”













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