Il Cavaliere De Rosa: «Europe risks becoming an industrial museum»

While the European Union continues on the path of ecological transition, two historical pillars of the continental economy – the automotive and steel industries – are facing a deep crisis. Increasingly stringent regulatory constraints, a lack of effective industrial strategies and fierce international competition are putting entire production sectors at risk. In this context, we met with Cavaliere Domenico De Rosa, CEO of the SMET group, a leading logistics company.

Cavaliere De Rosa, what is your opinion on the current industrial policies of the European Union, particularly in the automotive and steel sectors?

I believe that the European Union has embarked on a dangerously technocratic path. They are trying to govern the complexity of the real economy as if it were an algorithm to be optimized, but the economy is not an abstract formula. The serious crises that are currently affecting the automotive and steel industries are the most obvious result of this approach disconnected from industrial, social and geopolitical reality.

Let's start with the automotive sector: what didn't work?

The Green Deal, in particular the ban on internal combustion engines from 2035, has imposed an accelerated transition to electric, without a real industrial strategy to support it. We have left our historic car manufacturers – such as Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot and Fiat – to face alone the Chinese competition, supported by the State, and the pragmatic harshness of the American industry. In Europe we impose increasingly stringent limits, such as Euro 7 or minimum quotas for electric vehicles, while China invades the market with low-cost cars and the United States protects its manufacturing with incentives. The result? Plants are closing, jobs are being lost, and industrial know-how is being sacrificed in the name of an abstract regulatory transition.

And what about the steel industry?

The steel industry is perhaps the most emblematic case of the disconnect between political objectives and real instruments. We are talking about a sector with very high energy intensity, today crushed by short-sighted policies on the energy front, by a real regulatory inflation – I am thinking of the ETS system, the CBAM, the growing environmental limits – and by a total lack of strategic vision. European steel is increasingly less competitive, while historic plants in Italy, Germany and France are struggling between unrealistic reconversion plans and a lack of capital. There is talk of green hydrogen, of electric blast furnaces, but these are technologies that are not yet mature or cannot be scaled up in the short term.

In your opinion, what is the fundamental error of the European approach?

The European Union seems to behave like a neutral legislator, uninterested in building a real industrial policy. But European industry is disintegrating under the weight of regulations designed more to satisfy an urban climate ideology than to face global competition.

So you are not against the ecological transition?

Absolutely not. No one questions the need to innovate and reduce emissions. But we need a realistic vision that accompanies change, rather than imposing it from above. We need to support industrial transformation with concrete investments, temporary protections, intelligent trade agreements and, above all, with an authentic dialogue with businesses.

What if you had to send a message to the European ruling class?

A simple but crucial question: what is the point of saving the climate, if in the meantime we desert Europe of factories, workers and skills? Without steel and without cars, we will not be a green power, but only a museum of industrial civilization.