While the Europe 2020 targets are useful, they do not reflect a level of ambition that will make Europe different from China, the US or Brazil, Beccalli argued.
Instead, efforts should be intensified to "re-engineer the EU's processes, ensuring that we have a homogenous economic policy, a homogenous foreign policy and a homogenous security policy".
GE is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company employing about 300,000 people worldwide with earnings of $11.2 billion in 2009.
Beccalli believes more fundamental changes could help build an entity where people can identify themselves as Europeans rather than just from a given country.
The main obstacle to creating this more powerful entity is the "ton" of barriers that still exist in the single market, Beccalli said, lamenting the EU's "inability to fully leverage its vast internal market".
"We have a huge hidden power," he claimed, but as things stand "we're running with an iron ball attached to our foot".
The GE CEO attributed the blame to the "present selfishness of EU member states," which do not understand the need to give some things up to reap the collective benefits of a stronger Europe.
Regions and cities on the rise
On the other hand, he says Europe's regions and cities are taking matters into their own hands, something which has aroused the interest of GE and other major employers in the EU 27.
Beccalli believes the genesis of this movement lies in the economic crisis. "Because of stimulus packages, a ton of money was delivered into infrastructure," he argued, which in turn meant that big and small companies alike that are competing for public contracts increasingly bypassed national ministers and instead went directly to regions and cities, whose authorities were "the people signing the cheques".
Likewise, he endorsed the tendency of new EU Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn to highlight cities as a main driver for change. Cities will be the main force in sensitising EU citizens to the need for action on a plethora of issues, from energy efficiency to regional reform, he argued.
Finally, on the subject of EU innovation strategies, the GE CEO argued that the Commission should focus on providing venture capital and encouraging a stronger emphasis on education to "foster understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation".
"Concerning SMEs, the key is to create better channels for finance [and] improved capability to open a company in a short period of time, while also paying attention to maintaining big companies which are a major source of growth and jobs in Europe," he concluded.
