EPICENTER

In BrusselsReport.eu, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI), as part of the EPICENTER network, argued that the EU’s 2028–2034 budget could be cut to around €1.54 trillion while directing more resources towards competitiveness. LFMI expert Edas Matulaitis argued that new priorities such as competitiveness, security and defence do not automatically require a larger budget, and that the real question is which tasks genuinely need EU-level action. Drawing on EPICENTER’s alternative model, which keeps the core budget close to the historical benchmark of around 1% of GNI and comes to roughly €223 billion less than the Commission’s €1.763 trillion proposal, the article also calls for dropping the proposed Corporate Resource for Europe (CORE), rejecting a contribution based on tobacco excise revenues, and assessing other new revenue sources against their impact on competitiveness.

In BrusselsReport.eu, Garvan Walshe, drawing on his new EPICENTER paper “The Supply Side Energy Revolution”, argued that steady improvements in solar, wind and battery storage, driven by market competition, have brought enormous reductions in electricity generation costs. He set out three shifts: solar becoming by far the cheapest way to generate power, followed by wind; comparative advantage moving to the sunniest and windiest places; and economic decision-making turning from distributing high climate costs to a task more familiar to classical liberals. Walshe called for the energy transition to be reconfigured on liberal, free-market lines. He urged faster permitting for upgrading wind turbines and connecting new zero-carbon sources, and argued that grid operators must learn to manage decentralised networks.

In Delfi.lt, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LLRI), as part of the EPICENTER network, argued that much of the EU’s diagnosis on competitiveness is accurate, but that the answer is not necessarily a larger EU budget. Drawing on analysis by LLRI and its EPICENTER partners, the article shows that the 2028–2034 budget could be set at around €1.54 trillion. LLRI expert Edas Matulaitis stressed that the debate on competitiveness should not be reduced to how much more money to spend. He argued that new priorities such as competitiveness, security and defence do not automatically mean an ever-larger budget, and that barriers to business and investment must be removed first. The article adds that Lithuania’s upcoming Presidency of the Council of the EU is an opportunity to help shape a budget policy that strengthens competitiveness.

In NEGlobal.eu, Emelie Franzén, Research Coordinator at EPICENTER, argued that Nordic Compass, an industry alliance chaired by former Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, is exploring a merger of the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish stock exchanges into a single regional marketplace. This would be a first concrete step towards the capital markets integration Europe has debated since 2015. She stressed that Europe’s problem is not a shortage of capital but that it remains fragmented, nationally siloed and largely idle, and that no public budget, however generous, can substitute for private capital in delivering the competitiveness agenda. While a Nordic union would leave European companies still navigating 27 different rulebooks, Franzén argued that only a genuine European capital market matches the scale of the problem, and urged leaders to treat the Nordic model as a template for bottom-up action before the Nordics go it alone.