We can no longer count the reports of economists that have ended up in a drawer. Will the report on competitiveness that Mario Draghi presented to the European Commission on September 9 suffer the same fate? It is very possible. But for now, it still permeates public debate. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the community executive, often refers to this, even in the distribution of the commissioners’ portfolios. In Brussels there is no council of European ministers of energy, industry, finance or even agriculture without it being mentioned, in one way or another.
On Thursday, October 17 and Friday, October 18, the Heads of State and Government of the Twenty-Seven, who will meet in the Belgian capital, plan to hold a first exchange on the subject. They will continue the debate on November 8, this time in the presence of the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), during a new summit scheduled in Budapest.
Even if the “Super Mario” recommendations are far from achieving a consensus among European leaders, they cannot be left aside. “Mario Draghi, I’m Mario Draghi. He is not Italian, he is not French, he is not German, he is the former president of the ECB who saved the euro during the 2010-2012 financial crisis with his “whatever it costs”.explains a European diplomat. Nobody at the European Council table questions his intellectual and political authority. This is the “statue of the Commander of Europe”summarizes Sébastien Maillard, from the Jacques Delors Institute.
But that’s not all. From the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, to the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, passing through the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, the Twenty-seven largely share the alarmist diagnosis raised by the former Italian Prime Minister about the European Union ( EU). ). “From then on, saying “we bury the Draghi report” would mean giving up all European ambition, it would be collective suicide”continues Mr. Maillard.
Over 400 pages, Draghi analyzes, in a manner as surgical as it is relentless, the evils of an economy in complete decline compared to the United States and China. If it does not react by investing massively in innovation, the economist predicts, the EU is promised a “slow agony”. Faced with the rise of populism, which feeds on the erosion of people’s living standards, and the growing rejection of policies to green the economy, Draghi states: “If we do not act, we will have to compromise our standard of living, our environment or our freedom. […] We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions. It is an existential challenge. »
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