The European Round Table for Industry (previously known as the European Round Table of Industrialists), abbreviated ERT, is a cross-sectoral forum and advocacy group in the European Union consisting of some 60 European industrial businesspeople working to strengthen competitiveness in Europe.
History
The roots of the European Round Table for Industry date back to the early 1980s. The European economy at that time, was regarded as suffering from eurosclerosis in which the European Economic Community (EEC) was perceived as suffering from a lack of dynamism, innovation and competitiveness when compared with the economies of Japan and the United States. The negative economic consequences of the competitive situation worried several leading European businesspeople.
At the initiative of Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, the CEO of Volvo, 17 European business leaders met in the Paris boardroom of Volvo on 6 and 7 April 1983. They envisioned the creation of organisation, which would be able to convey its message about the state of the economy to the European political leaders. The core message was that Europe needed to modernise its industrial bases in order to regain its competitiveness. The industry perceived a lack of a common European industrial development policy, in contrast to the European agricultural policy.
The meeting in Paris was attended by Gyllenhammar, Karl Beurle (Thyssen), Carlo De Benedetti (Olivetti), Curt Nicolin (ASEA), Harry Gray (United Technologies), John Harvey-Jones (ICI), Wolfgang Seelig (Siemens), Umberto Agnelli (Fiat), Peter Baxendell (Shell), Olivier Lecerf (Lafarge Coppée), José Bidegain (Cie de St Gobain), Wisse Dekker (Philips), Antoine Riboud (BSN), Bernard Hanon (Renault), Louis von Planta (Ciba-Geigy) and Helmut Maucher (Nestlé). François-Xavier Ortoli and Étienne Davignon of the European Commission attended the latter part of meeting.
During meetings that followed later that year, ERT was established. Its goal was to gather the leaders of some of Europe’s most significant global businesses, and build cross-sectoral consensus on European matters, promoting competition and competitiveness on a European scale.
The Single Market
Promoting the European single market would become ERT’s core objective. In its first ever publication, a memorandum to the EC Commissioner Étienne Davignon in April 1983, ERT catalogued challenges they argued faced European industry. Among these were fragmentation of the European market; the need to upgrade infrastructures, roads and communications; and the need for governments to remove the many obstacles to innovation and competitiveness.
In November 1984, ERT co-founding member Wisse Dekker (Philips) presented "Europe 1990: An Agenda for Action", a plan for achieving a European Single Market, at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. The plan, strongly backed by ERT, was then presented at a public speech in January 1985 to an audience including many of the newly appointed Commissioners, led by Jacques Delors. Delors’ speech to the European Parliament a few days later set out his ideas for completing the Single Market. In June 1985, the European Commission published its white paper "Completing the Single Market", which paved the way for key treaty changes in the Single European Act of 1986.
From the outset, ERT played a role in promoting the construction of the Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden as part of its European Link project on improvements to European infrastructure. This project also included several other international European infrastructural projects, such as the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link between Denmark and [ermany. Later, ERT became active in the promotion of the earliest Trans-European Networks.
1990s
ERT's busiest decade was 1988 to 1998 under different chairmen: Wisse Dekker (Netherlands), Jérôme Monod (France) and Helmut Maucher (Switzerland) with Keith Richardson as secretary general. During this time ERT published reports on the internal market, infrastructure, education, the environment, the information society, competitiveness, employment and tax issues. Its active role in encouraging the first global G8 cooperation on building common standards for the information society was recognised by several country leaders, including President Bill Clinton.