Europe, Competitiveness and Sustainable Development

European Union hardly integrates competitiveness and sustainable concept. Industrial policy, competition policy, regional policy and clustering policy represent the policy mix of the European Union. One difference between development theory and competitiveness theory is that competitiveness theory brings us a new story about clustering and networking. Today we can see many articles about clustering and networking. One reason is that this is something new. All writers tend to write something new. Anyway we also have the oldest concept of industrial policy which is also useful today. Keynesians want the government to stand behind domestic firms wherever there seems to be a winner-takes-all competition for future monopoly profits. The new way of thinking is that we need strong regulation of competition and well developed business environment. So the government must do more for quality of business environment. If one country has a more developed business environment against others than the companies will be more competitive on the long term.