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Berlin’s austerity blocking technological innovation
News website OKO.press sees Intel’s withdrawal as a symptom of the EU’s technological backwardness:
“The technological backlog was recently discussed in detail by the former head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, in his widely acclaimed report on the EU’s competitiveness. In his view, the EU needs to invest heavily in order to catch up, which means, among other things, taking on joint European debt. However, such ideas are rejected by many, including the finance minister of the country from which Intel is now fleeing – Germany. So the circle closes and Europe remains trapped in technological dependence on powerful non-European corporations.”
The market is cleverer than the state
Cicero says the time has come to make fundamental changes in economic policy:
“Just like his Green Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck, the Social Democrat Scholz is under the illusion that the state can simply decide which are the industries and technologies of the future and then make them grow and prosper by giving them billions. But this only works in the rarest of cases. … If a company is subsidised to the tune of billions, in the end all the other companies lose out. In the case of Intel, economists with a market economy mindset pointed this out right from the start and warned against this mega-subsidy. They were arrogantly ignored by leading SPD politicians.”
Subsidies can reduce dependency
Handelsblatt explains why large subsidies can make sense in certain cases:
“The logic behind them is not that difficult to understand, and also quite compatible with a liberal market doctrine: for the chip companies, it’s of course cheaper to simply continue production in China and Taiwan. However, that fails to account of the risk of a military conflict, because companies are geared towards maximising short-term profit. Consequently, the state must compensate for these ‘externalities’ to forestall a market failure. One would have thought that the example of Russian gas would have made the dangers of overdependence regarding individual goods crystal clear by now.”
Invest in the defence industry instead
Rzeczpospolita argues that the state subsidies earmarked for the Polish chip factory would be better invested in the defence industry right now:
“If we’re not transferring these 7 billion złoty [roughly 1.6 billion euros] to the American giant’s account, it would pay off to invest them in the development of the Polish defence industry. Either by using these funds for orders in the industry itself, or directly for investments in its production capacities. These two options are not mutually exclusive.”