On September 9 2024, former ECB President Mario Draghi published a landmark report.
A document of approximately 400 pages, addressing the future of European competitiveness and industrial strategy, also offering a laundry list of necessary steps to keep the EU competitive in the global race.
Among the many proposals, it also included fiscal coordination, joint borrowing, and integrated policymaking.
Probably even Draghi didn’t think that said joint borrowing will mostly finance the €90 billion support promised to Ukraine, funded through the European Commission borrowing on capital markets.
As it was ‘a matter of urgency’ according to European Council President António Costa, the EU’s leaders agreed to ‘provide a loan backed by the European Union budget’.
Understand: to facilitate borrowing, it will be anchored in the existing budget framework and new revenue mechanisms (something that is yet to prove itself viable) – and to the trimming of traditional spending, like that on agriculture and cohesion policy, that was euphemistically worded as ‘streamlining spending priorities’.
A ‘streamlining’ that has lead to endless fiery protests by farmers, who rightfully feel their livelihoods threatened by the ‘new priorities’.
French President Emmanual Macron said that borrowing on capital markets ‘was the most realistic and practical way’, as if most European countries wouldn’t already be burdened by soaring debts.
Then, on January 6, the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ summit pledged ‘legally and politically binding guarantees’ for Ukraine, including plans to ‘finance the Ukrainian army, continue their weapons deliveries and provide financial assistance to the government in Kyiv’.
Thus, Ukraine enjoys priority over the EU’s own competitiveness.
Because the sad reality is that the implementation of the Draghi report is as slow as molasses in this unexpectedly snowy January.
It’s enough to take just one glance on the European Policy Innovation Council’s (EPIC) ‘Draghi Observatory & Implementation Index’.
Published a year after the Draghi Report, it paints a dismal picture about the overall state of things.
Out of Draghi’s 383 recommendations, only 11.2 percent have been fully delivered, and ‘even when partial progress is counted, the EU has reached just 31.4 percent of the Draghi agenda’.
A similar report by the Deutsche Bank found that most progress has been scaling up in the defence industry.
The rest is either ‘in progress’ or ‘untouched’.
The EPIC report concludes that business is as usual in Brussels.
Europe is losing to its competitors in the world, yet the EU still hasn’t learned how to choose its battles wisely.
Instead of ‘prioritizing growth and the strengthening the structural reforms and strategic investments, ensuring a sustainable public economy’, as European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde urged in September 2025, the continent chose a different path.
The Commission is busy making plans and drafts yet fails to deliver those. (At least this is consistent with von der Leyen’s previous record.)
The Commission presented its ‘competitiveness compass’ in January 2025, a ‘roadmap to restoring European dynamism and growth’, proudly boasting that ’90 percent of its flagship initiatives are directly inspired by Draghi’s most pressing recommendations’.
Plans and ‘legislative initiatives’ were rolled out, yet the implementation is mostly reserved to fancy press statements, while sufficient action is lacking.
As a reminder, one of Draghi’s recommendations was ‘less bureaucracy, less talk and more action’.
On the anniversary, Draghi gave a bleak assessment on the outlook for the block, warning that ‘there is no clear path to finance the investments we need’.
Now, with €90 billion spent on Ukraine, this statement seems more valid than ever before.
