LMario Draghi's report on European competitiveness, says Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, must be the basis for the Union's action over the next five years. It must be said that the report is of high quality. With its very accurate diagnosis, that of a “slow agony” of our continent, in the words of its author. With his lack of wooden language – a convinced European, Draghi does not hesitate to put the bureaucracy of the Commission and the States and their poor governance in the management of public funding on trial. By his support for reforms, in particular transversal ones. By his demonstration that the fragmentation of Europe into twenty-seven countries jealously guarding their prerogatives in practically all areas represents a crippling competitive handicap and makes us non-existent on the world stage. The only way to increase purchasing power in a sustainable way and to maintain our sovereignty is to innovate and improve our competitiveness. However, we have fallen behind the United States, which holds the upper hand in this area, and we will soon be outpaced by China.
Yet many commentators seem to retain from the 400 pages of the report only the significant sum linked to the financing of investments necessary for the recovery of our economies. Some potential industrial beneficiaries and opponents of “austerity” – the austerity of a France with a deficit of 6% and heir to fifty years of uninterrupted deficits? – applaud the financial ambition of the report. The frugal states of Northern Europe, on the other hand, see in it the prospect of misused public money and a new subsidy to Southern Europe after the European recovery plan of 2020, the main beneficiaries of which are Italy and Spain, and to a certain extent France.
Two scenarios, both equally damaging, could then arise. One where the project is (strategically) forgotten, the reason for this expenditure, and where the focus is on the cake to be distributed. Growth would not be there, and the public debt would only be higher. The other in which the Draghi report would be thrown into the dustbin of history, like so many other reports. To give the (real) Draghi plan a chance, we must proceed differently.
Joint renewal project
Starting with an agreement on spending levels is the best way to turn the plan into mush in the political negotiations that follow. Logic would dictate that Europeans should instead agree on a project: for example, do they agree to create the institutions that will give a chance to the disruptive innovations that Europe so badly needs – need we remind you that none of the twenty largest tech companies and none of the twenty largest global start-ups are European, and that we leave the most profitable activities in the value chain abroad? For now, as the report on innovation in Europe (“EU Innovation Policy. How to Escape the Middle Technology Trap », TSE-Bocconi-CES Ifo Munich) than the Draghi report, the European institutions are not at all adapted to slowing down the slow technological agony that we are undergoing.
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Source: Lemonde
