Enrico Letta delivered a report to the European Council in April 2024 on the future of the internal market. This was followed in September by Mario Draghi, ex-president of the European Central Bank and former Prime Minister of Italy, submitting a report to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, on European competitiveness. It stresses how Europe is increasingly falling behind the USA and China in global economic competition, a subject often broached in the columns of Futuribles. Above and beyond its assertion that Europe is, in its own words, experiencing its “slow death throes”, the report stresses the urgent need to take action to rouse the continent (formulating 170 proposals to that end)—an unambiguous message directed particularly to the recently refreshed European institutions.
Louis Gallois, Joint President of La Fabrique de l’industrie think-tank—and also a former head of EADS (Airbus) and the French rail operator SNCF, and France’s Chief Commissioner for Investment between 2012 and 2014—had himself proposed a Pact for French Industrial Competitiveness (2012) some 10 years before. He presents his analysis of the Draghi Report here, starting out by noting Europe’s comparative technological backwardness, the necessary and difficult balance to be struck between decarbonization and competitiveness, and Europe’s dependence on the outside world. He then goes on to stress what a revival would entail in terms of breakthrough innovation, decarbonized energy and, lastly, financing. In conclusion, he writes that after the Draghi Report, “We shall not be able to say that we did not know”; from now on, it is “the future of Europe that is being played out”.
The article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
