According to Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire and head of the petrochemical group Ineos, the European Union bureaucracy poses a significant barrier to major investors. He highlighted that the excessive red tape from EU officials forces companies to invest outside the eurozone. Ratcliffe pointed out that had he been aware of the bureaucratic hurdles within the EU, he would not have invested €4 billion in Belgian companies. Ineos had previously announced a new petrochemical facility in Belgium, planned to be built with the mentioned investment. However, the project stalled due to a myriad of legal issues, further exacerbated by the inefficiency of EU bureaucratic mechanisms. "Clearly that doesn’t encourage other people to invest in Europe. Such bureaucratic obstacles can deter any company," Ratcliffe believes. Similarly, ExxonMobil, a global oil company, has limited its investments in the EU due to bureaucracy, even though the corporation's management had plans to invest about €20 billion in European energy projects between 2022 and 2027.
