The European Union (EU) is facing today “an existential challenge” ; if she does not change, she will be condemned to “a slow agony”. Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), was very alarmist on Monday 9 September when he made public the report on competitiveness that the European Commission had commissioned him to produce a year ago. A few days earlier, on 4 September, in front of the presidents of the political groups in the European Parliament, the former Italian Prime Minister had even expressed confidence that “nightmares” when you imagine what awaits the Twenty-Seven if nothing is done.
The facts are there: the European economy has stagnated compared to that of the United States, while China is inexorably catching up. “Real disposable income per capita has increased almost twice as much in the United States as in Europe since 2000”, Mario Draghi explains. And, according to him, given the current state of affairs, there is no reason for this decline to stop.
Of course, the ageing of the population (it is expected to lose two million workers a year by 2040) means that the effects are partially masked. “There are fewer and fewer people sharing a pie that is getting smaller and smaller, we don’t see the drama”Draghi sums up. Except that the challenges facing the Union in decarbonising its economy, shifting towards artificial intelligence or reducing dependencies in an increasingly unstable geopolitical context force it to act quickly.
Otherwise there won’t be enough left. ” cake ” to the Europeans to bring their model to life. “If Europe fails to become more productive, we will be forced to make choices. We will not be able to become a leader in new technologies, a model of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage at the same time. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.”estimates Mario Draghi.
“Huge investment needs”
This is the thesis of the Italian economist who, over the course of 400 pages of his report, analyses the reasons for Europe’s withdrawal and sets out his 170 proposals for changing the situation. He believes that it is imperative for Europeans to equip themselves with qualified labour, to concentrate on research, to complete the construction of an internal market that remains unfinished, to reduce the electricity bill for citizens and businesses (two or three times higher than in the United States) or to seriously tackle the de-bureaucratisation of their economy.
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