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Petrochemical billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has accused Europe's “suffocating bureaucracy” and environmental bureaucracy of encouraging companies to invest outside the region, saying he knows the regulatory hurdles ahead of time. He admitted that he would not have agreed to the landmark 4 billion euro investment in Belgium if he had had the opportunity to do so.
Ratcliffe told the Financial Times that the European Commission's Green Deal, the EU's ambitious drive to decarbonise, must also take into account the importance of supported industries, adding that Brussels' “uncompetitive '' warned of growing opposition from businesses to the policy.
“If it's this difficult in Europe, you're going to go to America or China or the Middle East to build new capacity,” said Ratcliffe, chief executive of petrochemicals group Ineos. Ta. Member of the British soccer team Manchester United.
Europe's declining business competitiveness compared to the US, China and other rivals poses a critical challenge for the continent's largest industry, and how to protect the single market while maintaining world-leading environmental transition goals is causing major political debate within the EU.
European governments cannot compete with the fiscal strength of US President Joe Biden's Inflation Control Act, which provides $369 billion in green subsidies aimed at accelerating the deployment of clean energy technologies, or the low-cost, high-demand Chinese market. I am concerned that this may be the case.
Ratcliffe's comments come as US oil and gas company ExxonMobil says it could withhold billions of dollars in climate-related investments from Europe unless Brussels eases regulatory burdens around decarbonization. It reflects a threat.
“I don't think anyone would be against a Green Deal,” Ratcliffe said, but added that Brussels should not look at deindustrialization as a path to decarbonization.
“[Commission president Ursula von der Leyen] We need to take care of the industry and guide it in the right direction. “Don't make her so competitive that she shuts everything down,” he added.
“European manufacturing has been in decline for the past decade compared to its main competitors, the US and China. We have been losing ground against those two. It is not the path to becoming.”
Ineos, founded in 1998 with a petrochemical business in Antwerp, announced four years ago that it would spend 4 billion euros to build a new production plant on the outskirts of the Belgian port city. Project 1 will be the largest project of its kind in Europe in over 20 years.
But the project has been mired in permitting issues, legal challenges and regulatory disputes. This week, 15 NGOs filed a new lawsuit seeking to cancel the reinstatement of necessary building permits, which have been granted and revoked multiple times, citing the environmental impact of the proposed site.
“Unfortunately the permitting has been a nightmare… It's clear that it's not going to encourage other people to invest in Europe,” Ratcliffe said of the delay. “We wouldn't want to do that project again if we knew they were at risk of revoking the permit.”
