With his report on European competitiveness, Mario Draghi makes a crude and honest assessment of the EU’s current economic situation: things are going badly. As a convinced Europhile, however, he struggles to demonstrate how the increase in the EU’s powers that he advocates, particularly in terms of industrial or fiscal policy, would necessarily be a factor of added value for Europeans. This is all the more astonishing given his persuasive argument that the EU has gone too far in regulating the economy. The European Union is failing, but it needs to be given more powers, and then it might succeed. So might we sum up the already famous report by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on the future of European competitiveness. A report commissioned, it should be noted, by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last year. On the occasion of its publication on Monday, she recalled that « Throughout this year, dear Mario, we have had the pleasure of meeting very often and having an intense exchange. We have shared our analyses of the economic situation and begun to work out solutions. » And, in fact, Mario Draghi’s report, while fairly critical of the European economic situation, does rather support the strategic decisions taken by Ursula von der Leyen over the last five years on the Green Deal, in particular, or on hydrogen. And if he blames the…
