Roger Schonfeld, writing in a collective Scholarly Kitchen reflection post on the recent Academic Publishing in Europe conference:
[T]he presentation that will be most lasting came from EU open access envoy Jean-Claude Burgelman. He spoke in deeply competitive terms about Europe’s scientific sector. Specifically, he spoke about China and the US as competitors (also collaborators), and the need for Europe to avoid “hesitation” and transform to stay in the competition.
Burgelman's context, tellingly, was economic—around science's role as an engine for competitiveness. There's an echo, without the heavy jingoism, of the now-notorious Association of American Publishers letter to the Trump administration.
The other interesting reflection came from Lisa Hinchcliffe, who observed what I've long noticed too: The curious European tolerance for APC-based gold OA in a commercial key:
What I did not hear is any interest in Europe in wresting away control of the scholarly publishing system from the existing commercial leaders and there is relatively little attention to containing prices, given Plan S is no longer seeking to cap APCs. This comment from Ralf Schimmer is particularly striking: “we want to destroy the subscription system, but I’ve never said we want to destroy the publishers.” This perspective seems to me significantly different than the dialogue I hear in the United States where open access is often hoped to be a mechanism for weakening the hold that large publishing houses have on the market.