As part of its ongoing efforts to enhance the EU’s economic resilience and competitiveness, the European Commission is currently setting up a new team to centralise the collection, analysis and dissemination of business intelligence. The new entity operates within the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.
What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence in this context refers to the collection and analysis of data and information to identify concrete risks and opportunities affecting European competitiveness and economic security. Key characteristics of business intelligence in this context include
- granularity: The focus of the information is typically at the level of individual companies and/or specific technologies, thus complementing readily available information
- timeliness: Business intelligence aims to identify threats and opportunities for EU companies at an early stage so that policy intervention can influence outcomes
- novelty: Ideally business intelligence should deliver insights which are not (yet) publicly available, thus often resulting from direct interaction with economic actors, industry experts and more.
Information sources
The business intelligence team draws on a variety of information sources, including in house expertise from the Directorate-General's sectoral units and other Commission services, external industry experts, surveys of EU enterprises in a given sector on specific questions and databases with firm and sector-specific information.
Scope
The business intelligence provided by the team can range from purely factual and informational content to in-depth analysis, depending on the specific case.
The team's work addresses a wide range of risks and opportunities, such as events disrupting global value chains, firm-specific or geography-specific events, changes to non-EU laws and regulations, mergers and acquisitions, important technological developments, inter alia.
Examples of questions addressed by the team are: ‘Which firms exactly are forced to halt production due to a new export restriction?’, ‘Which major production plants in a battered sector might close in the near future?’, ‘Which EU companies in a specific field are close to a technological breakthrough?’.
Modus operandi
The business intelligence team typically operates at the request of the Commission's hierarchy, providing tailored analysis to support informed decision-making, which may involve responding to specific requests from Commissioners, Directors-General or other senior officials across the Commission.
Objectives
The main objectives of the business intelligence team are to provide timely and actionable intelligence that enables anticipatory policy thinking on major shifts, risks or opportunities in key industrial sectors.
By doing so, the team aims to enhance the Commission’s readiness and response capacity in situations where urgent policy action might be warranted and inform policymaking with credible and concrete evidence rooted in the language and concerns of business actors.
Additionally, the team seeks to strengthen the EU’s ability to identify vulnerabilities and competitive advantages across industrial ecosystems.