From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Europe may not yet be ready for Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever. The first Flemish nationalist ever to hold the job, he was sworn in barely a year ago, yet in that year, he has upturned the debate over Europe’s economic and political future far more than Holland’s Geert Wilders, France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, or anyone else (except possibly Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni).

De Wever had already transformed the New Flemish Alliance, whose ideology is based on modern conservative and economically liberal values. Their vision is a fiscally responsible and realistic socio-economic policy that protects private enterprise. His speeches and writing often reflect his knowledge of Roman history, including popular essays “About Identity” and “About Woke” that brought him to prominence.

His 2023 book, Over Woke, argued that “wokeism” criminalizes Western society and glorifies everything that can harm it. In response to criticisms of the book, de Wever said that progress “must be the objective, not the organization of a vendetta between citizens divided into victims and perpetrators. That’s not how to achieve emancipation.”

Last September, in his first speech before the U.N. General Assembly, de Wever said he was still nostalgic for the 1980s — when “I truly believed that the Western world was bound together by shared values and mutual respect. I also believed that our values would eventually rule the world.”

That viewpoint, he admitted, flies in the face of Thucydides’ observation that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” De Wever told the delegates that “civilization means striving to be better than our basic instincts, to rise above them.”

That’s why, de Wever continued, “I stand before you today to advocate for a world anchored in mutual respect. A world of free and fair trade. A world of strong partnerships, respect, and cooperation. A world based on international law. A world that tackles climate change. A world of peace, prosperity, and progress.”

And then he got tough, telling the world that “Those who wish for peace must be prepared to defend it” at a time when new forms of imperialism, new military threats, and violent conflicts are destabilizing entire regions.

Foreshadowing President Trump’s move against Venezuelan usurper Maduro and Mexico’s assault on El Mencho, de Wever demanded that the U.N. confront the rise of international organized crime. Criminals, he reminded them, “know no borders.” Their networks exploit gaps between police forces and legal systems to fuel terrorism, human trafficking, and the illegal arms trade.

Perhaps poking at U.S. President Trump, de Wever argued that tearing down trade barriers is essential to creating pathways to prosperity for as many people as possible. And prosperity, he argued, builds trust and engenders peace.

De Wever was just warming up.

In October, he stood firm against a plan promoted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to seize frozen Russian assets to underwrite a 90-billion-euro loan to help Ukraine fight back against President Putin’s forces. De Wever’s view — that such a move might provoke Russia to expand its war to the entire European theater — won the day.

Speaking before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January, de Wever outlined a roadmap for a strategically autonomous Europe that would balance alliances with economic and military self-reliance. The EU’s current lack of strategic autonomy, exposed by the Ukraine war and President Trump’s “America First” agenda, does not have to continue.

Though the EU today “does not have sufficient military capabilities, we do have the largest market in the world, which we could weaponize.”

That set the stage for the big blows he threw at those gathered in Antwerp on Feb. 11 for the European Industry Summit. Two days earlier, de Wever spoke at the Belgium-based Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (home to 5,500 researchers from 90 countries) that, although Europe possesses world-class research, “too often our ideas remain in the laboratory, while commercialization and production take place elsewhere.”

While Europe awaits the latest review of the EU CHIPS Act, which hopes to revitalize Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem, de Wever noted that the EU as a bloc today leads in only four of 74 technologies of the future, which China dominates, and the U.S. is moving quickly to catch up.

While those nations are investing massively, Europe “risks planning too much, regulating too much, and setting objectives that sound appealing but are not very realistic. Project after project is postponed or cancelled. Procedures are complex. Rules are heavy. Decisions take too long.”

And no wonder. In the EU, more than twice as many people work on implementing and monitoring rules as do on innovative research.

Antwerp is de Wever’s hometown — and he used that backdrop for his hardest-hitting diagnosis to date. Echoing his earlier comment that Europe must never become a museum, he opened by stating that “the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution cannot turn into a beautiful heritage park where visitors admire the prosperity of the past while the future is built elsewhere.” [Sound familiar?]

The shocking reality that 83 percent of the pillars meant to strengthen European competitiveness have seen no progress — and some have deteriorated — should be a wake-up call, de Wever said. Worse, a new report on the chemical sector that has long been “the backbone of European industry” found that closures in the industry have increased sixfold over the past four years — representing a loss of nearly 10 percent of Europe’s chemical production capacity.

Challenging the audience to “first believe that our industry is the future (of Europe),” he put forth a pragmatic approach based on the principle of starting from what is feasible — not just what is desirable. And without industry, there will be no European technological leadership, and without that, there will be no defense capability — and without both, there can be no strategic autonomy.

Simply put, “If Europe neglects its industrial base, it does not only lose growth. It loses influence. And, ultimately, it loses sovereignty.” [Ever hear that before?]

De Wever then put forth a three-point plan of attack. Step 1 is technological neutrality that judges solutions by results rather than labels. This will require reducing the administrative burden on all businesses by 35 percent, especially in the fields of energy and digitalization. European labor productivity cannot continue to lag 20 percent behind that of the United States.

Second, Europe needs partnerships that make it stronger — not dependencies that make it weaker. But, he cautioned, Europe should not follow the U.S. and Chinese models that are based on winners and losers; it should continue to follow the win-win philosophy based on strength through cooperation.

Finally, de Wever chastised Europe for accepting its modest 5 percent share of global venture capital investment — a tenth of that in the U.S. Europeans, he urged, must actively attract and scale strategic projects in clean tech, defense manufacturing, advanced materials, AI, and life sciences.

And, to reiterate, that will require regulatory reforms that unleash the energy of European entrepreneurs, scientists, and manufacturers. But first, Europeans must remember that Europe remains an attractive market that is democratic, rules-based, free-market oriented, stable, and respectful.

To Europe’s stodgy old guard, that might be the hardest step of all.

This article originally appeared at The American Spectator