From the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal—Dialectic Change in the EU’s Meta-Discursive Strategising

Abstract

For the first time in the 21st century, the European Union (EU) altered its overarching strategy after only five years, shifting from the 2019–2024 European Green Deal (EGD) to another ‘flagship’ for the period 2025–2029, the Clean Industrial Deal, embedded into the Competitiveness Compass. This article examines to what extent the EU’s new ‘Deal’ marks a meta-discursive change and situates this change in its historical trajectory. It argues that EU policymakers have discursively engaged in ‘dialectic’ change, whereby original EGD aims are partially kept (on decarbonisation, circular economy) and partially negated (on other environmental and social issues) in favour of alternative goals that resonate with pre-EGD meta-discourse predominantly focused on economic growth and competitiveness. In so doing, they discursively combined preferences of opposing political forces. The tensions inherent in the resulting meta-discursive synthesis are, however, surfacing in the implementation of the current strategy, provoking uncertainty about the EU’s regulatory identity.

1. Introduction

In December 2019, European Commission (EC) President von der Leyen presented the flagship project of her first term—the ‘European Green Deal’ (EGD)—in the European Parliament as being “about reconciling our economy with our planet … and respecting the environment we live in” [1]. Her forceful advocacy for a Deal aimed at turning the “commitment to tackling climate and environmental-related challenges [into] … this generation’s defining task” in the European Union (EU) [2] was supported by a large majority of European parliamentarians (MEPs) from the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists&Democrats (S&D), the Liberals (Renew Europe) and the Greens [3]. Shortly thereafter, the heads of state of the EU-27 also endorsed the EGD in the European Council [4], in an unprecedented show of support for what marked a “discursive paradigm shift” that—for the first time—turned environmental matters into the EU’s top priority [5]. What followed was the systematic roll-out of the EGD’s comprehensive roadmap, leading to a hitherto unseen formulation of 154 environmental targets, many of which were enshrined in legal acts aimed at re-designing the EU’s socio-economic system [6].

Five years later, von der Leyen began her second term by launching another flagship project—the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ (CID)—in an altogether different setting. In February 2025, she presented the CID to business representatives at a ‘European Industry Summit’ in Antwerp. Arguing that “we have to change the framework”, von der Leyen [7] referenced EU competitiveness deficits and an “innovation gap” with major economies to promise the business community targeted investments to support their ‘clean transition’ alongside ‘simplification’ of the EGD-induced regulatory framework via a “fleet of omnibuses [that] will target red tape and administrative burden”. Simultaneously, she clarified that “[o]ur climate and social goals do not change. … Because the young people would never forgive us, if we did not rise to the challenge of global warming” [7].

The CID argues that, as “Europe … grappl[es] with rising geopolitical tensions, slow economic growth and technological competition, … [t]he EU must urgently address three challenges at once: a climate crisis and its consequences, competitiveness concerns and economic resilience … This is why Europe needs a transformational business plan [that] brings together climate action and competitiveness under one overarching growth strategy” [8]. It embeds itself into the broader framework of a ‘Competitiveness Compass’ (CC) [9] and follows from von der Leyen’s ‘Political Guidelines’ for her 2024–2029 term [10]. These latter were strongly informed by expert reports on EU competitiveness outsourced to former Italian Prime Ministers Draghi and Letta [11,12].

Beyond the optics surrounding the launches of these two flagship initiatives, with an astounding shift from announcing the EU’s overarching strategy in its democratically elected chamber to doing so in front of select business representatives, the contents of the CC/CID mark, prima facie, a comprehensive re-adjustment of EU meta-discursive strategising. For the first time in the 21st century, the EU significantly adapts its multi-annual strategy after only five years, and this despite continuity at the Commission’s helm. The two preceding strategies—‘Europe 2020’ (2010–2019) and the ‘Lisbon Strategy’ (2000–2010)—had, with minor modifications, served as ten-year strategies despite the transition from Commission President Prodi to Barroso in 2004 and from the latter to Juncker in 2014 [5]. The seeming meta-discursive shift from a sustainability-oriented to a ‘competitiveness’ and ‘simplification’ agenda sparked vivid debates. For the business community and representatives of the EPP, von der Leyen’s own party, the CID “is the right direction”, but requires due implementation [13]. Environmental groups, by contrast, saw it as a tool for “unacceptable concessions to polluters” [14]. Analysts also oscillated between considering investing in industrial decarbonisation a necessity for the EU to become a ‘geoeconomic’ actor and harsh criticism depicting the simplification agenda as a “bonfire of regulations [resembling] an act of vandalism” [15].

This controversy about the CID resonates with two major academic debates: first, it speaks to the literature on the EU’s meta-discourse, that is, the structuring “ensemble of ideas, concepts and categorisations … through which meaning is given to physical and social realities” [16], which strategically determines derivative EU legislative and policy proposals for multi-annual periods [5]. Since the 2020s, this literature has concentrated on understanding the significant change brought about by the EGD as a sustainability-oriented discourse succeeding decades of economy-centred ones [5]. Inspired by the academic literature on environmental sustainability, where “discourse analysis has become an … established framework” [17], scholars examined the language of the Green Deal to argue that it provides—for the first time in the EU context—an empowering “transformative discourse”, whose implementation hinges on the capacity of its defenders to harness “the radical branch on which it grows” against status quo ante proponents [5,18,19]. In this debate, academic analyses of how the CC/CID insert themselves into the long-term evolution of EU meta-discourse and how the EGD’s transformative sustainability discourse has been taken up or developed are currently missing (see, however, the legal assessment in [20]).

Second, the transition from the EGD to the CC/CID is of high relevance to the rapidly expanding scholarly debate about the EU’s evolving ‘regulatory identity’, discussed under the guise of an EU “geoeconomic turn” [21,22,23]. This debate predates the release of the new strategies. According to Herranz-Surrallés et al. [22], in reaction to an increasingly “geoeconomic world order” characterised by a ‘weaponisation’ of the economy, the EU aims to use “geoeconomic power”, mobilising its “economic leverage for obtaining strategic resources and advantage over rival powers”. This, in turn, requires a transition from EU ‘market-regulating’ to domestic and external “geoeconomic policies” [22]. While this literature has argued that a change towards such ‘policies’ has been under way since the early 2020s, it remains an open question whether the novel EU meta-discourse embodied by the CC/CID reflects this change, and which boundaries these strategies discursively set for the further design of such ‘geoeconomic policies’.

In light of these debates, the recent development of EU meta-strategising raises thus fundamental questions requiring scholarly scrutiny: first, what exactly constitutes the meta-discursive change from the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal?; and second, what type of change does it represent? This article addresses these questions by initially performing a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the CID and the context-setting Competitiveness Compass. It then qualifies this change from a historical perspective. By answering these questions, the article offers a first in-depth, interpretive, text-based analysis of the EU’s new meta-discourse. Taking the understanding of CDA that “discourse is key to the dynamics of policy transformation” [24] seriously, it documents discursive change over time to contribute empirically and conceptually to, on the one hand, the debates about the EU’s long-term strategising and the EGD’s discursive legacy, and, on the other hand, the literature on the EU’s ‘geoeconomic turn’ by elucidating to what extent the Union’s alleged embrace of ‘geoeconomics’ is observable in its discourse.

The article proceeds as follows: it first outlines an analytical framework that defines key concepts and introduces the discourse-analytical approach employed to investigate, and the literature on policy change used to qualify, the EU’s meta-discursive strategy change. It then analyses and subsequently assesses this change, before offering a few pointers as to how it may be plausibly explained. It argues that the Union’s meta-discourse has undergone ‘dialectic’ change, reducing the original EGD objectives to a concentration on decarbonisation and amalgamating this latter with reinforced competitiveness objectives. To implement this agenda, EU policymakers foresee varying and potentially contradictory responsibilities for the Union. The article concludes by discussing the academic and normative implications of these findings.

2. Framework of Analysis

This section discusses the design of a critical discourse analysis aimed at tracing EU meta-discursive change before introducing the public policy literature on policy change, whose insights allow for classifying this change. It also briefly considers which factors might contribute to accounting for the modification in EU meta-discourse.

2.1. How to Trace Discursive Change with Critical Discourse Analysis

EU meta-discourse as a structuring frame for EU policymaking and its change over time can usefully be analysed with the help of critical discourse analysis, which starts from the premise that discourse is central to “social change”, as discursive alterations precede modifications of political practice [24,25]. Change in ‘words’ empowers actors to adjust their ‘deeds’ by modifying policies and, ultimately, altering social reality.

Designing a CDA requires tailor-made pre-specifications, as there is neither an “accepted canon of data collection” nor a single best way of analysing collected data [26]. Rather, the “operationalization and analysis [are] problem oriented” [26]. It is therefore necessary to offer a clear definition of the ‘subject’ of analysis (what is being traced?), the corpus of text analysed (data collection: whose and which discourse is examined?), and the analytical steps to examine that text (data analysis: how is the text interpreted?).

When it comes to the subject of analysis, this study is concerned with change in language use from a status quo ante, represented by the 2019–2024 European Green Deal, to the status quo of the 2025–2029 Clean Industrial Deal as the main initiative under the Competitiveness Compass. Many existing analyses of the EGD (for a comprehensive review, see [18]) have tended to assess the Green Deal against specific theoretical, often normative benchmarks provided by, e.g., degrowth [27]. Given their normative outlook, such analyses are of limited use for tracing cross-time discursive change. More suitable in this respect are both the insights and the framework that I used for a longitudinal CDA-based interpretive analysis comparing the EGD to its two predecessor strategies, the 2010 ‘Europe 2020’ and the 2000 ‘Lisbon Strategy’ [5]. To conduct that analysis, I had developed a three-pronged CDA framework that can usefully be extended to the analysis of the CC and CID as the EGD’s successors shaping the EU’s meta-discourse for the second half of the 2020s [5]. The three analytical foci are [5]:

(i)

problem diagnosis: “policy-makers’ perceptions of the problem(s) of a community, its causes and effects”, which requires tracing how policymakers portray the EU’s main challenges requiring policy intervention and what reasons they identify for these;

(ii)

vision of the future: the “proposed solutions in the form of concepts of the desired end state” resulting from the Union’s policy intervention, which implies identifying which aims EU policymakers posit as desirable;

(iii)

paths towards the future: the “steps … needed to attain” this end state, requiring an analysis of where policymakers place the responsibility for initiating and carrying out actions, and which concrete actions they recommend.

This tried-and-tested triptych of ‘problem diagnosis’/‘vision of the future’/‘paths towards the future’ serves as a framework for this article’s analysis, extending the earlier cross-time comparison [5] to the period 2025–2029.

In terms of data collection, this article focuses on the EU’s meta-discourse as developed by the EC, namely the Clean Industrial Deal itself [8]. The CID cannot, however, be considered in isolation from the Commission’s broader Competitiveness Compass, of which it is the most significant strategic deliverable [9]. The CC/CID have been endorsed by the European Council [28] and European Parliament [29]. Given length constraints, the discourse surrounding the CC’s and CID’s launches, including Commissioners’ speeches, reactions by the European Council, Parliament or other stakeholders’ representatives, is not considered as part of the cross-time analysis, but is referenced when considering what might account for the change in EU meta-discourse.

In terms of data analysis, CDA relies on text interpretation based on hermeneutics as a “method of grasping and producing meaning relations … [which] requires detailed documentation” [26]. Operationalising the above triptych, the analysis concretely focuses on such ‘detailed documentation’ and interpretation of EU (in this case EC) policymakers’ textual constructions of (i) the diagnosis of current EU problems and their causes (answering the guiding questions: What terms do EU policymakers use to depict the Union’s main problems requiring policy intervention, and what do they say about why they consider these to be problems?); (ii) the EU’s vision of the future (guiding question: What language do EU policymakers deploy to sketch out the Union’s future post CC and CID implementation?); and (iii) the paths towards that future (guiding questions: Which language do policymakers employ on the steps to take for the EU to attain the desired end state? To whom do they ascribe responsibility for implementing these steps?). The analysis thus follows an interpretivist logic whose primary aim is to attain a ‘meaningful understanding’ (verstehen) of what constitutes the EU’s meta-discursive change [30]. To remain consistent and text-centred, setting forth my interpretive effort undertaken to compare the EGD to its predecessors [5], it relies on the direct interpretation of the CC/CID, focusing on responding to the above questions with the help of emblematic quotations. Specific attention in this interpretive effort is paid, including via keyword searches, to different linguistic representations of the ‘problem diagnosis’ (e.g., ‘problem(s)’, ‘challenge(s)’)/‘vision of the future’ (e.g., ‘aim(s)’, ‘goal(s)’, ‘objective(s)’)/‘paths towards the future’ (e.g., ‘measure(s)’, ‘initiative(s)’). Additionally, to enable tracing cross-time change (comparing the CC/CID to the EGD), keyword search focused on core themes of the EGD pertaining to its problem diagnosis, aims and key measures (see also [5]). By contrast, the interpretive effort refrained from recourse to any third-party commentary of the CC/CID.

2.2. How to Classify Change in EU Meta-Discourse

To determine the type of policy change that the CC and CID embody compared to the EGD and thus be able to understand the long-term evolution of the EGD’s “transformative discourse”, the public policy literature dedicated to policy change offers a useful typology [31].

This literature identifies, besides the radical change embodied in a ‘paradigm shift’ (not considered here, as it is evident that the major EGD objective of 2050 net-zero emissions remains an aim in the CC/CID), four “conceptualizations” of change patterns, that is, “theoretical perspectives on historical sequencing” of (discursive constructions of) policies [32]; (see also [33]):

(i)

‘cyclical’ change takes a policy back to the “status quo ante” [32]. In the context of the present analysis, this would imply that the CC/CID return the EU’s meta-discursive strategising to the EGD’s predecessors, Europe 2020 and/or the Lisbon Strategy;

(ii)

‘dialectic’ change comes “through a process of negation and synthesis” [32]. Such change would presuppose that the CC/CID ‘negate’ (aspects of) the EGD while offering elements of discourse that represent an antithesis to (elements of) the original discourse to develop a synthesis between the ‘old’ EGD and the CC/CID-based meta-discourse;

(iii)

‘linear’ change “occurs in an evolutionary fashion without any clear endpoint” [32]. It takes the form of a meandering meta-discourse without clear guideposts, characterised by goals and actions developed ad hoc. It would imply that the CC/CID do not explicitly refer to the EGD and its aims, nor contain clear-cut objectives;

(iv)

‘teleological’ change moves “in the direction of a final identifiable goal-state” [32]. It presupposes policymakers’ intentional refinement of a meta-discourse to lead towards an explicit endpoint. Such change would presuppose that the CC/CID retain the EGD’s ‘goal-state’ but refine the pathways towards its attainment.

To identify to which of these types the meta-discursive change from the EGD to the CC/CID corresponds, the empirical change patterns detected are reinterpreted and, following a “flexible pattern-matching” approach, compared to these four theoretical change type patterns [34].

Once the type of change has been established, and while a full-fledged explanation would require a comprehensive process-trace to reconstruct the re-shaping of EU meta-discourse over the period 2020–early 2025, which transcends the scope of this article, a set of considerations is offered on how that change may be explained. In line with the interpretivist approach of this article, this effort is explicitly intended as a step towards further explanatory research in future studies. This effort equally starts from the literature on policy change, whose explanations differ in function of the type of change observed [33]. Drawing on the most relevant of these explanations, the account is tailor-made to the detected patterns.

3. Discourse Analysis: EU Meta-Discursive Change from the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal

This section discusses the meta-discourse embodied in the EGD as a benchmark against which to assess the change brought about by the CC/CID, whose analysis ensues.

3.1. The EU’s Meta-Discursive Strategy for 2019–2024: The European Green Deal

This brief discussion draws on this author’s earlier discourse analysis of the EGD (for more details, see [5,18]).

3.1.1. Problem Diagnosis

The problem diagnosis underpinning EU policymakers’ move to turn the EGD into the flagship policy for the legislative term 2019–2024 started from Earth System scientists’ insights about the Anthropocene: “The atmosphere is warming, and the climate is changing with each passing year. One million of the eight million species on the planet are at risk of being lost. Forests and oceans are being polluted and destroyed” [2]. In this vein, the EGD not only comprised abundant references to “urgent” “climate and environmental-related challenges”, problematising climate change, species loss, and varying forms of pollution, but also referenced complexity thinking by acknowledging that the challenges are “interlinked” [2].

By consequence, EU policymakers discursively identified these challenges as constituting “this generation’s defining task” [2], amounting to a considerable discursive reframing of what the EU had previously regarded as its main problem: where earlier strategies had emphasised the threats that competitive pressures stemming from globalisation (2000s Lisbon Strategy) and the economic–financial crisis (2010s Europe 2020) posed to its growth model and jobs in Europe, the EGD moved ‘the environment’, i.e., the biophysical bases of the EU’s socio-economic model, “centre-stage” [5].

3.1.2. Vision of the Future: EU Aims

Based on this diagnosis, the EGD’s vision of the future was, as formulated by Commission President von der Leyen, that of a “continent reconciled with nature” [1].

Realising this vision presupposed attaining several interlinked goals, most notably that of turning ‘Europe’ into the first “climate-neutral continent” by mid-century [1]. Simultaneously, the EU pursued biodiversity-related objectives, as the EGD “aims to protect, conserve and enhance the EU’s natural capital” and pollution-related goals to “protect the health and well-being of citizens from environment-related risks” [2]. Additionally, social and participatory aims formed part of the EGD’s vision of the future, as the EU’s “collective ability to transform its economy and society to put it on a more sustainable path” was to be harnessed in ways that would make the “transition … just and inclusive. It must put people first” [2].

Altogether, successful EGD implementation was thus to lead to a socio-ecological transformation of the EU’s economy, “respecting the environment we live in” [1]. The shift that this formulation of the central goal of EU policy intervention embodied marked a “profound meta-discursive break” with past strategies’ foci on the promotion of EU growth and jobs, stressing the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development [5].

3.1.3. Paths Towards the Future: Who Does What

Concrete steps to bring about this desired end state involved “a set of deeply transformative policies” [2], implying potentially disruptive interventions.

As key measures to attain its objectives, the EGD foresaw [5]: (i) a holistic vision that picked up on the complexity thinking of its problem analysis to ‘transform’ (i.e., green) major sectors—from agriculture to transport—while paying attention to biodiversity protection and fighting pollution; (ii) a planning approach by which responsibility was given to the EU to gradually adopt targeted measures and overcome silos by “mainstreaming sustainability in all EU policies”; (iii) a high level of legal bindingness of the proposed measures and a clearly articulated willingness to “step up the EU’s efforts to ensure that current legislation and policies … are enforced and effectively implemented”; (iv) “ensuring that no one is left behind” by interlinking the environmental and social aspects of the transformation (‘just transition’); as well as (v) a commitment to guaranteeing citizen and civil society involvement in the implementation of this transformative agenda, notably via a ‘Climate Pact’ [2].

To roll out these paths towards the future, the EGD ultimately empowered the EC to implement a comprehensive roadmap of strong regulatory measures, discursively framed (in its first sentence) as being for “its citizens” and co-created with them [2].

3.2. The EU’s Meta-Discursive Strategy for 2025–2029: The Competitiveness Compass and the Clean Industrial Deal

This section applies the three-pronged framework of ‘problem diagnosis’/‘vision of the future’/‘paths towards the future’ to offer an in-depth, interpretive analysis of the CC and CID as joint components of EU meta-discursive strategising for 2025–2029. Each sub-section starts with the context-setting CC.

3.2.1. Problem Diagnosis

The Competitiveness Compass of 29 January 2025 aims to “guide the [EU’s] work in the coming five years … to reignite economic dynamism in Europe” [9].

Right from the start, the CC constructs the need for an urgent policy intervention by positing a loss of competitiveness as the EU’s central problem, arguing that “Europe … must act now to regain its competitiveness and secure its prosperity” [9]. Variants of “competitive/ness” represent the most used terms (97 times) in the document, underscoring the discursive portrayal of competitiveness as the core of EU identity: “Europe’s competitiveness and what Europe stands for are inseparable” [9]. Specifically, the CC claims that “[o]ur freedom, security and autonomy will depend more than ever on our ability to innovate and grow”, linking the survival of the EU “as an economic powerhouse, an investment destination and a manufacturing centre” to productivity growth necessities [9].

Having posited the EU’s competitiveness loss as its central challenge, the CC explains that the Union has “fallen behind the US in advanced technologies, while China … is winning the race for leadership in certain new growth areas” because of a “persistent gap in productivity growth” [9]. Its “root cause is a lack of innovation”, as “Europe is failing to translate its ideas into new, marketable technologies and failing to integrate those technologies into its industrial base” [9]. EU policymakers attribute this double-“failure” to “an increasingly unlevel global playing field, characterized by the large-scale use of industrial subsidies” as well as to “European companies … being squeezed by high energy prices and a high regulatory burden” [9]. They particularly emphasise this latter as a central cause of decline, repeatedly depicting the Union’s regulatory framework as a “burden”, a “brake” and “littered with barriers” [9].

As the ‘flagship initiative’ derived from the CC and promised by Commission President von der Leyen for the first 100 days of her second term [10], the Clean Industrial Deal of 26 February 2025 contends itself with briefly but pointedly reiterating the CC’s problem diagnosis while injecting references to ‘decarbonisation’, as the “EU must urgently address three challenges at once: a climate crisis …, competitiveness concerns and economic resilience” [8].

Overall, the CC/CID thus converge in their problem diagnosis that preventing Europe’s “slow agony”, as apprehended in the Draghi Report [11], requires an “urgent” focus on boosting EU industries’ competitiveness.

3.2.2. Vision of the Future: EU Aims

The Competitiveness Compass portrays the desired end state EU policymakers wish to attain through the envisaged policy intervention as the “renewal of Europe’s competitive strength” via “a new competitiveness model based on innovation-led productivity”, helping Europe to become “the place where tomorrow’s technologies, services and clean products are invented, manufactured and marketed, as we stay course to climate neutrality” [9].

Concretely, the CC “pursues two broad goals”: to “upgrade” existing policies while engaging in “a step-change … to adapt to new realities” via novel policies; and “to develop new ways of working together to increase the speed and quality of decision-making, simplify our frameworks and rules”, including by better coordinating EU and national policies, as “many key levers, from taxation to … industrial policies” are member state responsibilities [9].

The Clean Industrial Deal amplifies the CC’s core vision with a stronger focus on “a commitment to accelerate decarbonisation, reindustrialisation and innovation, all at the same time” [8]. The CID thus “confirms the EU’s dedication to its climate goals” and links this to the ultimate objective of creating “a thriving new European industrial ecosystem of growth and prosperity” [8]. By contrast, it does not address other environmental challenges.

In this vein, the CID envisions a future in which “sustainable and resilient production” is increased “by nurturing competitive manufacturers who drive decarbonisation through innovation” [8]. The EU’s ‘nurturing’ effort focuses on “two closely linked sectors”: first, the “energy-intensive industries, which require urgent support to decarbonise, electrify, as well as confront high energy costs, unfair global competition and complex regulations, harming their competitiveness” [8]. EU policymakers specify these sectors later as the steel and metals, automotive and chemicals sectors, considered incapable of reaching decarbonisation aims without the Union’s “urgent support”; and second, the “clean-tech sector” which lies “at the heart of future competitiveness and [is] necessary for the industrial transformation, circularity and decarbonisation” [8]. In assisting these two sectors, “circularity will be a priority”, and the “ambition … is to make the EU the world leader on circular economy by 2030” [8].

Simultaneously supporting the incumbent energy-intensive and the future-oriented clean-tech sectors is considered “indispensable … to reach our climate neutrality targets, absorb emissions and … ensure we can produce the technologies of the future made in EU” [8]. Ultimately, this new ‘Deal’ thus strives for nothing less than “a new chapter of European industrial history defined by growth, resilience, and leadership on the world stage” [8].

Altogether, in the CC/CID, EU policymakers sketch out a vision of Europe as a ‘re-industrialised’ continent, where it is their responsibility to ‘nurture’ industries that deliver growth via technological innovation while pursuing decarbonisation.

3.2.3. Paths Towards the Future: Who Does What

To foster the desired ‘new competitiveness model’, the Competitiveness Compass “proposes a new approach to competitiveness that combines industrial policies, investment and reforms” to “urgently tackle longstanding barriers and structural weaknesses” [9]. It identifies three “transformational imperatives to boost competitiveness”, inspired by the Draghi Report [11], and five “horizontal enablers” (simplification, market completion, funding, skills promotion and EU-member state synergies) [9].

EU policymakers deliberately chose to place “simplifying the regulatory environment, reducing burden” as the first enabler, arguing that “[r]estoring Europe’s competitiveness requires going much further … in cutting red tape” [9]. To do so, the CC suggests “reality checks” and “stress tests” to “deliver an unprecedented simplification effort” via “Simplification Omnibus Packages” pursuing quantified targets of “reducing reporting burden” [9]. Enabler 2 reinforces the simplification trope by arguing for “fully exploiting benefits of scale offered by the Single Market”, in which “certain barriers stubbornly persist, and new obstacles … continue to appear” [9]. Responsibility to address these obstacles is assigned to the EU (Commission) in response to business demands. Enablers 3 to 5, by contrast, lay co-responsibility with the member states in calling for “sufficient public and private investment … to boost productivity growth” via, e.g., an EU budget allocated “in support of competitiveness priorities” (enabler 3), advocating welfare system reforms to “increase labour market participation” (enabler 4), and proposing “better coordinating policies at EU and national level” (enabler 5) [9].

When it comes to the ‘imperatives’, “Closing the innovation gap”, with 13 “flagship actions”, again focuses on “persisting regulatory barriers” and limited “access to venture capital” [9]. It calls on the EU to “restart a virtuous innovation cycle” by completing the single market [9]. Simultaneously, the “EU will do everything possible to ensure that [innovative companies] have the funding they need”, inter alia by “raising R&D spending” [9]. EU policymakers afford specific attention to tearing down “barriers” in order “to ensure the conditions for advanced technologies to thrive”, “nurturing world-class industrial development in the EU to reap the productivity gains from technology”, particularly emphasising digitalisation and “new growth engines” (bio- and space technology, Artificial Intelligence) [9].

With the imperative “Reducing excessive dependencies and increasing security”, EU policymakers suggest balancing open trade as a “key driver” for growth with “economic security” considerations by investing in reliable partnerships, notably through Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships (CTIPs) [9]. To address risks (e.g., critical raw material shortages), they suggest EU “measures such as screening of foreign direct investment, export controls and outward investment monitoring” [9]. To counter “[u]nfair competition and level … the playing field”, they envisage using “protective tools” (e.g., trade defence mechanisms) and public procurement with a “European preference” [9]. Preparedness, both against “hybrid threats” and a “changing climate and extreme weather events [that] increasingly threaten European economic security”, is to be promoted by climate adaptation and water resilience plans as two of ten flagship actions—both with a reactive focus (avoiding negative consequences for the EU’s economy) rather than an environmental problem mitigation orientation [9].

With the imperative “A joint roadmap for decarbonisation and competitiveness”, EU policymakers argue that “decarbonisation policies are a powerful driver of growth when they are well integrated with industrial, competition, economic and trade policies” [9]. The strife for climate neutrality for mere growth purposes is to be pursued through, inter alia, energy price reductions via an accelerated clean energy transition and electrification alongside demand encouragement for low-carbon products, enhancing public procurement, financial incentives, more flexible state aid frameworks as well as tax system reforms [9]. In their effort to support EU businesses’ competitiveness for growth, EU policymakers afford particular attention to “[e]nergy intensive sectors, such as steel, metals, and chemicals”, which—albeit not at the forefront of technological development—they consider to be among “the most vulnerable in … the transition. These industries are the backbone of the European manufacturing system … To accompany their transition, tailor-made action plans for some of them will be presented following the [CID], based on close dialogue” [9]. EU policymakers finally emphasise “resource efficiency and boosting circular use of materials”, which “help … decarbonisation, competitiveness and economic security” [9]. Just like decarbonisation, they portray ‘circularity’ predominantly as a means to the end of growth.

This latter, central imperative sets the scenery for the Clean Industrial Deal and its detailed array of measures across six “business drivers” (affordable energy, lead markets, financing, circularity and access to materials, global markets/international partnerships and skills) and six “horizontal enablers” (cutting red tape, exploiting the Single Market, boosting digitalisation, accelerating innovation, promoting quality jobs and better EU-member state coordination) [8]. These latter slightly elaborate on the enablers identified in the CC.

Across its business drivers, the CID offers a rich menu of steps towards the desired future. Much of the discourse remains deliberately technical. EU policymakers clarify that for the first enabler (“Access to Affordable Energy”) to be effective, “lowering energy bills” is primordial, reiterating key measures identified in the CC such as state aid and energy taxation reforms, energy efficiency boosts, and an “accelerat[ed] … roll-out of clean energy and manufacturing” through “concrete measures to address permitting bottlenecks related to industrial access to energy and industrial decarbonisation” [8].

Enabler 2, creating “lead markets”, entails “[b]uilding a business case for decarbonised products [which] … requires concrete measures on the demand side” such as “non-price criteria” in public procurement and incentives for private purchases [8]. Boosting “[p]ublic and private investments” represents a third enabler, with suggestions for novel “tool[s] for EU industries to finance industrial decarbonisation and clean tech manufacturing projects”, proposals on leveraging private investment, as well as “[s]implified and flexible rules … allowing quick approval of State aid measures for decarbonisation … and clean tech projects” [8]. Boosting the circular economy aimed at “secure access to materials and resources”, and thus again for growth purposes, constitutes a fourth enabler [8].

The CID’s external dimension comes in via the fifth enabler dedicated to “[g]lobal markets and international partnerships”. CTIPs are to allow for “a faster, more flexible, and more targeted approach, tailored to the concrete business interests of the EU and its partners. The[y] … will … be designed to better align the EU’s external action with [its] industrial policy objectives considering businesses’ opportunities and needs” [8]. Further business promotion is envisaged under the heading “Promoting and protecting: Ensuring a level-playing field for the EU industry”. EU policymakers here combine support to businesses by “ensur[ing] that foreign investments in the EU better contribute to the long-term competitiveness of EU industry” with business protection via a “fast and efficient use of Trade Defence Instruments … such as anti-dumping or anti-subsidy duties” [8]. The final, sixth enabler foresees investments into “[s]kills and quality jobs for social fairness and a just transition” [8]. In this context, EU policymakers aim to “streamline the framework for sectoral skills reinforcement in strategic industries” so as “to ensure that employers can access the expertise they need”, with reskilled workers contributing to restoring EU competitiveness [8].

In synthesis, to accomplish a “thriving new European industrial ecosystem of growth” [8], the CC/CID assign responsibility to the EU for measures centred around regulatory simplification, protection of, and financial as well as innovation-enhancing support to incumbent, energy-intensive and recent (tech) businesses.

4. Discussion: Understanding and Classifying EU Meta-Discursive Change

This section first compares the EGD to the CC/CID to extract key patterns of change in the EU’s meta-discourse, answering the first research question. It then classifies this change to answer the second question. Finally, it offers a few pointers as to how the detected type of change may be explained.

4.1. Comparative Synthesis: Extracting Patterns of Change

Comparing the EGD with the CC/CID yields several noteworthy traces of change. To begin with, the CID, as the flagship initiative of the von der Leyen II Commission, is embedded into a broader “Compass” whose “North Star must be the renewal of Europe’s competitive strength” [9]. It sets the tone by turning competitiveness for growth purposes, rather than environment- and climate-related challenges, into the EU’s mantra for 2025–2029.

In this respect, the title of the new flagship initiative is of note. The Commission did not label it a “New Competitiveness Deal”, as the European Council had suggested in its April 2024 conclusions and November 2024 Budapest Declaration, but a ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ carrying competitiveness—linked to decarbonisation—in its subtitle [35,36]. While still a ‘Deal’—a social contract between an EU undertaking policy action and the addressees of this action—the title of the CID points to two profound differences with the EGD. For one, the shift from “green” to “clean” represents an emblematic change in language use, with the EGD’s predominantly nature- and people-focused terminology paired with a narrative of “transformative” change via strong sustainability-oriented policy interventions making way for technocratic, sterile language. The CC/CID generally avoid the terms ‘green’, ‘climate change’ and ‘environment’, employing ‘climate neutrality’, ‘decarbonisation’ or ‘clean tech’ instead to emphasise the desired outcomes and processes and (technological) means to attain them over the underlying challenges. Second, the EGD proposed a ‘European deal’ explicitly addressed to EU citizens with a promise to jointly orchestrate a socio-ecological transformation of the Union’s economic system to make it more environmentally sustainable while ensuring a ‘just transition’ for all. The CID, by contrast, offers an ‘industrial deal’ that makes a ‘business case’ to industry, changing the focus from the socio-ecological to the economic, and from addressing the EU’s citizenry to appealing to select industry leaders.

Additional differences can be identified when systematically comparing the EGD’s and CC/CID’s problem diagnosis, vision of and pathways towards the future (see Table 1). In terms of diagnosis, whereas the EGD drew the legitimacy of its policy intervention from the need to address fundamental nature-based challenges—focusing on the human-nature relationship by re-embedding EU economic activities into the biophysical realities of planet Earth—the CC/CID see the EU as confronted with the economic challenges of stalling competitiveness and growth. In response, they emphasise the relationship between public authorities in the EU and businesses. In return, they neglect EU-nature relations.

Table 1. Comparing meta-discourse—European Green Deal vs. Competitiveness Compass/Clean Industrial Deal.

	European Green Deal (2019–2024)	Competitiveness Compass/ Clean Industrial Deal (2025–2029)
Problem diagnosis	climate and environmental challenges resulting from pressures of the Anthropocene as ‘this generation’s defining task’	stifling EU competitiveness and growth resulting from external pressures and domestic insufficiencies (high energy prices, regulatory burden)
Vision of the future	redressing human-nature relations by pursuing a socio-ecological ‘transformation’ aimed at climate neutrality (by 2050), nature protection, zero pollution, and a just and inclusive transition	creating a climate-neutral ‘competitiveness model based on innovation-led productivity’
Paths towards the future	holistic, inclusive, participatory, target-oriented, planning-based and strongly regulatory approach; EU institutions co-create with citizens	business-centred approach combining ‘industrial policies’, ‘investment’ and simplifying ‘reforms’ of the EU’s regulatory framework; EU institutions (and member states) co-create with select industrial sectors

Source: author’s compilation.

In relation to the vision of the future (EU objectives), whereas the EGD represented a break from Europe 2020 and the Lisbon Strategy with their ‘growth-and-jobs’ foci [5], the CC/CID—selectively—build on the EGD but simultaneously draw on key meta-discursive features of its predecessor strategies. On the one hand, the CC/CID repeatedly emphasise that the EU “will stay course” on its decarbonisation goals [8]. On the other hand, it is a striking finding that they entirely neglect other environment-related objectives (except for occasional references to the ‘circular economy’ as a growth enabler). Essential EGD objectives related to the triple planetary crisis (biodiversity, pollution) no longer feature in the EU’s post-2025 meta-discourse. Even decarbonisation is presented predominantly in terms of its economic potential as “a powerful driver of growth” [8]. In short, where the EGD had emphasised the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development over the economic one, the CID re-arranges the priorities: while ‘climate neutrality’ remains a goal of the distant future (2050), other environmental as well as social aims are annihilated or significantly downplayed. Instead, the short-term well-being of the EU’s economy, notably its “industrial base … central to our prosperity”, moves centre-stage [8].

Pathways to the envisaged future are discursively narrowed in scope and scale, made less directive and legally binding: the EGD was about EU policymakers’ encouragement to holistically and in a participatory fashion, prominently through the ‘Climate Pact’, transform the EU’s economy. This was to be achieved especially via regulatory interventions for the broader good of environmental protection, while ‘leaving no one behind’. In contrast, the CC/CID propose measures primarily aimed at ‘nurturing’ businesses by liberating them from regulatory ‘burden’ and supporting them financially so that they can innovate technologically and grow while decarbonising.

Particularly notable in this regard is where EU policymakers place the responsibility for the suggested measures. With the CC/CID, the EGD’s idea of the EU as a standard-setter fostering a whole-of-society, socio-ecological transformation grounded in citizen participation makes way for an ambiguous vision of the EU (and the member states) as service-providers co-creating policies with and for the private sector. This ambiguity pertains especially to the ways the CC/CID depict the relationship between the EU as public authority (‘the state’) and businesses (‘industry’). On the one hand, the EU promises industrial actors greater autonomy. Businesses are portrayed as ‘knowing what is best for them’, as long as they are unhinged: they innovate by developing technological solutions, which in turn fuel their own growth and general economic growth for Europe. And as “European companies are being squeezed by high energy prices and a high regulatory burden” [9], EU policymakers see it as their responsibility to free them from this “burden” via “simplification omnibuses” and explicitly invite “industry to exercise bottom-up leadership” [8]. On the other hand, as European businesses are faced with “an increasingly unlevel global playing field” [9], EU policymakers consider it their task to “nurtur[e] competitive manufacturers” [8]. Altogether, while EU policymakers demand fewer (greening) efforts from businesses, they offer them more support—with the Commission as a “nurturing” ‘service-provider’ always in a ‘listening mode’.

This non-negligible transformation in understanding the responsibility of ‘the EU-as-state’ vis-à-vis the private sector warrants additional scrutiny, requiring further unpacking of the bottom row in Table 1 (‘paths’), notably in relation to varying policy recipes proposed in the CC/CID. The responsibility the EGD foresaw for the EU-as-state was that of a strong regulator for whom it was appropriate to further develop the Union’s legal acquis to make it environmentally, socially and economically sustainable (in this order). With the CC/CID, by contrast, EU policymakers identify the three intersecting—and possibly contradictory—EU responsibilities of protecting, promoting and simplifying European businesses’ operations (see Table 2):

Table 2. EU self-attribution of responsibility in the Competitiveness Compass/Clean Industrial Deal.

EU Responsibility vis-à-vis Private Sector	Aims	Means	Dimension(s)
Protector	Protecting European businesses against external competitors	Deploying defensive tools (Foreign Direct Investment screening, trade defence measures)	Outward-facing: ‘defensive’ arm of the external dimension of EU industrial policy
Promoter	Promoting growth opportunities for European businesses at home and abroad	Mobilising public and private financial support for European businesses, creating markets and demand (e.g., via public procurement); CTIPs	Inward-facing: domestic industrial policy; outward-facing: ‘offensive’ arm of the external dimension of EU industrial policy
Simplifier	Enabling largely uninhibited action for (European) businesses	Deregulation	Inward-facing

Source: author’s compilation.

(i)

Policymakers construct the responsibility of the EU as a protector, defending European businesses against outside interference and ‘unfair’ competition. Shielding businesses involves the deployment of instruments like Foreign Direct Investment screening and trade defence tools.

(ii)

EU policymakers consider the Union responsible for acting as a promoter of business opportunities, both domestically and abroad. The domestic angle of this self-ascribed duty is about strong(er) EU industrial policy that provides public and mobilises private financial support for (certain) European businesses, both incumbents in ‘old’ industrial sectors (automotive, chemicals, steel) and new ‘clean tech’ companies, as well as creates demand for their products, including via public procurement. It is complemented by an ‘offensive’ arm of the external dimension of the Union’s industrial policy articulated in the CID and operationalised primarily via the CTIPs, “designed to better align the EU’s external action with [its] industrial policy objectives considering businesses’ opportunities and needs” [8].

(iii)

EU policymakers perceive the EU as a simplifier. ‘Simplification’ could imply a mere ‘improvement’ of an existing regulatory framework to ‘facilitate’ the work of EU-based businesses. However, the CC/CID clearly point in a different direction: by consistently depicting regulation as ‘red tape’ that represents a ‘burden’, a ‘brake’, and a ‘barrier’—up to the point of considering the EU “littered with barriers” for businesses [8], they discursively undervalue a ‘simplification-as-facilitation’ in favour of a ‘simplification-as-deregulation’ message. In so doing, they primarily ascribe to the EU-as-state the function of a deregulator that tears down the “barriers” to innovation that “stubbornly persist” [9].

In synthesis, where the responsibilities of protector and promoter imply strong EU interventionism in the service of EU-based businesses, epitomising a certain vision of EU (green) industrial policy reinforcing EGD decarbonisation objectives, the duty of simplifier-as-deregulator implies that EU policymakers consider it appropriate for the Union to be a rather minimalistic provider of a largely uninhibited framework for businesses, among others by removing barriers often only erected via the EGD.

4.2. Classifying EU Meta-Discursive Change

The detected change patterns in the EU’s meta-discourse require further interpretation to answer the second research question. Clearly, these patterns do not suggest cyclical change, that is, a mere return to the status quo that existed before the EGD, as key decarbonisation aims of the latter are discursively preserved. Also, the CC and CID do not embody linear change “without any clear endpoint” [32], since they do specify a set of explicit targets. But what about teleological and dialectic change?

The EU’s self-ascribed responsibility as promoter and protector of European businesses emerging from the CC/CID could, at first sight, be interpreted as extensions of its self-image of a strong regulator promoting the greening of the EU’s socio-economic system prevalent in the EGD. Assessed as such, the CC/CID would discursively pave the ground for a genuine EU ‘green industrial policy’, understood as public actor intervention to support industries while firmly demanding their greening (i.e., decarbonisation). Interpreted in this way, the transition from the EGD to the CC/CID could be perceived as teleological change “in the direction of a final identifiable goal-state” [32], namely that of making the EU the first carbon-neutral continent, while merely adjusting the pathways towards this ‘goal-state’ and adding the aim of enhanced competitiveness.

Such an interpretation does, however, not capture the full extent of EU meta-discursive change. In fact, the discussed empirical patterns transcend the theoretical pattern of teleological change. With the CC/CID, the EGD’s ‘goal-state’ remains only partially intact. While the former restate the 2050 decarbonisation goal, they no longer pursue the aim of comprehensively redefining human-nature relations. On the contrary, they ostensibly neglect—to the point of de facto negating (by deliberately omitting)—original EGD aims related to nature protection and, although the CID occasionally alludes to it, a socially ‘just transition’. Instead, by turning competitiveness into the EU’s mantra, they deliberately revalorise the ‘growth-and-jobs’ discourse of the pre-EGD decades [5] and explicitly link it to decarbonisation. This double-discursive move—entirely excluding essential EGD aims from the CC/CID discourse while overemphasising decarbonisation and synthetically coupling this latter to revived competitiveness aims (and proposing corresponding measures) —suggests that in 2025 EU elites engaged not in teleological but in dialectic change, following “a process of negation and synthesis” [32].

4.3. Beyond Understanding: What Might Account for EU Meta-Discursive Change

The question that the above observation raises is: why has the EU, with largely the same lead personnel in key EU institutions, engaged in dialectic change in its meta-discursive strategising after only five years of EGD implementation? According to theorists of policy change, dialectic change typically results from an altered “balance of power between opposing entities” [33]. This resonates with analyses that consider the EGD as an empowering “transformative discourse”, whose implementation depends on a struggle between advocates of “the radical branch on which it grows” (the pro-EGD forces) and the proponents of (variations of) the status quo ante [18]. Concretely, policy change theorists suggest that dialectic “[c]hange occurs when the … opposing … forces … gain sufficient power to confront” the newly emergent status quo [33].

Perceived as a struggle between opposing forces that each pressurise the EC and its President in the process of designing the EU’s strategy for 2025–2029, the EU’s dialectic change in meta-discourse may be plausibly explained by three intersecting dynamics. These are proposed here in the form of initial pointers that could form building blocks of a more comprehensive explanation: first, changing electoral weights, with a ‘power gain’ of forces opposing the original EGD and favouring a strong EU competitiveness agenda; second, changing positions of key EU political forces prompting them to leave the original pro-EGD ‘discourse coalition’ to join the pro-competitiveness coalition, regularly in response to domestic and external lobby pressures; and third, as a moderating factor in support of some essential components of the EGD, institutional inertia, notably within the Commission.

First, in 2019, the EGD was supported by an overwhelming majority of EU member state governments and MEPs, with opponents primarily in the camp of the extreme right in both the Parliament and the European Council. Emblematically, Hungary’s Prime Minister Orbán had called the EGD a “utopian fantasy” and lambasted extra EU “regulation” [37]. With the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy price crisis sparked by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, this pro-EGD majority began to perforate as of late 2022. A prominent example of this perforation was, in 2023, the (at that point unsuccessful) resistance of the EPP group in the Parliament to the ‘Nature Restoration Law’, an EGD cornerstone, invoking arguments about competitiveness and jobs in the agricultural sector [38]. A few months later, the EPP-dominated European Council [35] would call for a “New Competitiveness Deal” and “policy action [to] be better put at the service of enhancing Europe’s economic, manufacturing, industrial and technological base, thereby securing the Union’s … industrial renewal, global competitiveness”. Similarly, the EPP’s ten “Priorities for the 10th term” of the European Parliament prominently featured “A European Competitiveness Strategy” (priority 3) alongside “an ambitious climate policy” (priority 9), but made no mention of other environmental matters [39].

With the June 2024 election, majorities in the Parliament decisively changed: while the EPP slightly increased the share of its seats, the extreme right gained many seats, and the Greens lost about a quarter of theirs. This shift to the right impacted the positions of the EC and its President: von der Leyen’s (July 2024) ‘Political Guidelines’ for her second mandate gravitated towards the altered EPP (and European Council) positions around “a new plan for Europe’s sustainable prosperity and competitiveness” [10]. Though still pledging allegiance to EU decarbonisation aims, the Guidelines relegated the EGD’s environmental and social aspects to second-tier issues, no longer addressed holistically, but dispersed across later sections of that document [10]. In November 2024, the European Council’s ‘Budapest Declaration’ explicitly called on the Commission to “present, as a priority, a comprehensive industrial strategy for competitive industries” to “ensure our industrial renewal and decarbonization”, while “[l]aunching a simplification revolution, … drastically reducing administrative, regulatory and reporting burdens”—paving the ground for the CC/CID [36].

Second, whereas the EU institutions’ shift to the right may explain the amplification of competitiveness in the Commission-led meta-discursive, it does not account for why, especially within the EPP, policymakers that had supported the original EGD agenda changed their minds within just a few years—despite unchanged biophysical realities and continuous EU citizens’ support for environmental measures [40]. As a complementary factor explaining the observed dialectic change, it can therefore be instructive to consider how EPP policymakers typically discursively motivate their volte-face. Key figures in the European Council habitually invoke the “growth gap” with China and the US, like Germany’s Chancellor Merz, who argued that “reducing bureaucracy is important for competitiveness, as too much regulation inhibits growth” [41]. For the Parliament, this emblematic statement by Peter Liese, the EPP Coordinator on Environment, Climate and Food Safety, is telling: arguing that EGD-based policies are too expensive, he implores them to “focus on climate protection” and “stop wanting to reach all other environmental goals at the same time” [42].

The justifications these political figures provide for their pushback against the EGD—related to bureaucracy, competition, costs—resonate very closely with the arguments of EU- and non-EU-based representatives of energy-intensive industries. Directly and openly, EU-based industrial actors managed to get—via regular dialogues and business summits—the Commission and EU leaders “to listen to [their] worries” [7]. The results of these privileged exchanges informed the Commission’s wording of the CC/CID (see [43]). Moreover, before and after the adoption of the CC/CID, further EU deregulation to protect industry interests was forcefully demanded by foreign actors like the US and Qatari governments, sending the Commission a list of EGD measures to discard [44].

Third, where changing motives informed by lobbying efforts may thus help explain key EU policymakers’ increasing negation of aspects of the EGD and the Commission’s pivot to aspects of the competitiveness tropes of past EU meta-discursive strategies, they cannot by themselves account for the unique competitiveness-and-decarbonisation synthesis of post-2025 EU meta-discourse. Here, the now minoritarian pro-EGD forces seem to have been able to resist with the help of institutional inertia, that is, political, legal and economic institutions’ resistance to radically changing paths. This represents thus another dynamic that may help explain the dialectical change, particularly why decarbonisation remains (discursively) a key reference point of EU meta-discourse. Politically, following the discursive paradigm change in the EGD, it would have been very costly for the Commission President to entirely walk away from this latter’s main, climate-related objective. Legally, the 2021 European Climate Law had durably enshrined net-zero emissions as a target binding on all member states. Economically, European businesses across key sectors continue advancing on the path to carbon neutrality [45], rendering a Trump-style attempt to return to the fossil-fuel era implausible. Where this inertia arguably prevented cyclical change (going back to the status quo ante), during the transition phase from von der Leyen I to II, a discursive formula had to be found to settle the struggle between a growing majority of EU policymakers preferring a minimalistic ‘simplification-as-deregulation’ state to redress EU competitiveness and a minority prioritising refined EGD implementation (green industrial policy). The conclusion discusses the implications of the resultant compromise that the CC/CID embody.

5. Conclusions

This article set out to understand and qualify the change in EU meta-discourse from its flagship policy of the 2019–2024 term, the European Green Deal, to its flagship for 2024/5–2029, the Clean Industrial Deal, as a key deliverable of its Competitiveness Compass. It found that EU policymakers have discursively engaged in dialectic change in their strategy, whereby original EGD aims are partially kept (on decarbonisation, circular economy) and partially discarded (on other environmental and social issues) in favour of emphasising alternative goals that resonate with, but also transcend, pre-EGD meta-discourse focused on economic growth and competitiveness.

With the resulting synthesis of select EGD and pre-EGD aims, the EU constructs an agenda comprising potentially contradictory sustainability- and competitiveness-oriented policies. On the one hand, EU policymakers portray the Union’s responsibility as that of a promoter and protector of select European industries, whose task it is to develop a ‘green industrial policy’ relying on stronger state interventionism, both within the EU (via subsidisation) and in its external action (via active market creation but also trade defence tools). On the other hand, they depict the EU as a rather minimalistic ‘simplifier state’ pursuing a deregulatory agenda ‘liberating’ businesses to uninhibitedly “innovate and grow” [9].

The article offers a few initial considerations on how this dialectic change may be plausibly explained, pointing to altered political majorities in the European Council and European Parliament, resulting in a shift to a more business-friendly, less environmentally inclined political right. Subjected to pressures of both EU-internal (e.g., energy-intensive industries) and external (e.g., US) lobbying for ‘less bureaucracy’, these centre-right political forces advocated ever more strongly—and apparently successfully—for the Commission to adopt a greater competitiveness focus in the EU’s meta-discourse. Their efforts are constrained by the institutional inertia created by the EGD.

As a research desideratum, further in-depth process-tracing is encouraged to comprehensively explain the EU’s meta-discursive change (and its ambiguity) in more detail than the exploratory account offered here could provide. Doing so would help tackle one of the limitations of the interpretivist approach pursued in this article. Other limitations come with its focus on key strategic documents, disregarding EU policymakers’ ‘flanking’ discourse when launching the CC/CID. Analyses that include these, but also research investigating the novel strategies from specific theoretical vanguards (e.g., ‘ecological modernisation ’) would equally be worthwhile future endeavours.

With its findings, the article contributes to the academic debates about EU long-term discursive strategising and its ‘geoeconomic turn’. For one, by offering a first in-depth, interpretive and language-based analysis of the CC/CID that unveils the evolution, ambiguities and tensions in EU meta-discourse, the article situates the EU’s latest strategy in its broader historical trajectory. In so doing, it sheds light on the discursive legacy of the EGD as a ‘transformative discourse’, demonstrating that its proponents were seemingly unable to durably realise the socio-ecological paradigmatic change potential of that Deal. Rather, with growing opposition, the EU’s meta-discourse turned into an amalgamation of the EGD’s climate-related core with tropes of earlier meta-discourses and select novel ideas pertaining to industrial policy. This finding, second, speaks directly to the ‘geoeconomic turn’ literature: while the dialectic change does integrate into the current EU meta-discourse ideas pertaining to ‘geoeconomic policies’ highlighted by that literature (e.g., “protect[ing] EU-based market players and strengthen[ing] supranational industrial policy” [22]), the EU’s attempt to bring competing discourses under the umbrella of a single compromise Deal does not represent a “constructive synthesis” [33]. The article shows that the CC/CID’s meta-discourse, and with it the EU’s ‘regulatory identity’, is far more ambiguous than the literature on the geoeconomic turn has so far acknowledged, opening the path to possibly contradictory policy recipes. Where the EGD had empowered forces supporting a socio-ecological transformation, the CC/CID simultaneously empower the proponents of stronger state intervention for a green industrial policy (at the heart of the debate about the geoeconomic turn) and those who believe that industrial competitiveness can best be served by a leaner state. In so doing, post-2025 EU meta-discourse contains inherent tensions that may have the propensity to constrain the design of effective geoeconomic policies.

Which of these discursively empowered forces will use the new meta-discourse most effectively for their purposes is certainly also a question for further research. Current evidence suggests that since early 2025, the political struggles that EU elites, notably the Commission and its President, tried to discursively settle with the CC/CID have resurfaced in day-to-day EU politics. Initially, the proponents of the ‘simplification-as-deregulation’ agenda have had the upper hand, as the Commission continues to send “fleets of omnibuses” to “simplify” existing legal acts [7]. Numerous EGD measures have been watered down and/or delayed. Prominent examples include the Commission proposal to reverse the previously agreed combustion engine ban by 2035 [46] and the EU Deforestation Regulation. Aimed at making supply chains for imported commodities (e.g., beef) deforestation-free, its application was already postponed twice by a year [47].

These trends are bound to continue, with the ‘simplifiers’ doubling down: at another ‘European Industry Summit’ in Antwerp in 2026, attended by several EU heads of state and government, von der Leyen called for a “deep regulatory housecleaning—at all levels” and was seconded by Chancellor Merz demanding “deregulation across all sectors” [41]. Simultaneously, the supporters of an improved EGD agenda resist. The Commission Executive Vice-President for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Ribera (S&D), depicted the EU’s ongoing deregulation as a “terrible political spectacle” [48], whereas S&D MEP Wolters warned against a “US-style green ‘culture war’” [49]. NGOs and academics (e.g., [50]) equally criticised the EU’s deregulation focus as “not an industrial strategy” and implemented in undemocratic and unlawful ways.

What these quarrels reveal is that the dialectic change in EU meta-discourse does not represent a sufficient basis to bring about a practical policy synthesis. Key stakeholders seem able to agree on ‘simplification-as-deregulation’, but—at least in the short term—not on gearing up the EU’s green industrial policy. By consequence, the EU’s once very clear regulatory identity, and with it, its oft-hailed ‘Brussels Effect’, stand to be seriously jeopardised. Where von der Leyen promised industry leaders “predictability” at the 2025 Antwerp Summit, a year later the opposite was perceptible. Both for domestic and foreign audiences, it is no longer entirely certain what the EU stands for, especially in relation to its formerly ‘green’ goals and related sustainability policies, with potentially detrimental effects on, among others, investment decisions. This ambivalence, more than anything, might therefore cost the Union its competitive edge in tomorrow’s world.