The Draghi report It is mammoth (400 pages) because the challenge that theEuropean Union will have to face to reform its own economy is equally gigantic. The document is divided into two parts: the Section A (general introduction on the various priorities) and the Section B (analysis and proposals chapter by chapter). The recipe Dragonsin short, wants to avoid the “slow agony” of theEurope through “immediately implementable” measures and others which, in fact, require greater political courage, by intervening on the governance of theEUfor example by increasingly introducing “majority voting” in Advisethus overcoming the vetoes of unanimity.
The document is divided into 10 areas – Energy, Critical Raw Materials, Digitalization-Advanced Technologies, Energy-intensive industries, Clean technologies, Automotive, Defense, Space, Pharmaceuticals And Transport – analysed in their current (deficient) state and accompanied by possible corrections; to these are added 5 “horizontal macro policies” to ensure that the implementation occurs according to a pre-established logic, since – as explained by the former president of the Advise Italian and governor of the ECB – everything is connected and you can’t do “one thing on one side and something opposite on the other”.
Analyzing the relationship many general principles and practical solutions emerge. To “reduce the cost ofenergy for end consumers and speed up the decarbonisation» – theEurope pay between 3 and 5 times more than the USA – it is then necessary to “encourage a progressive move away from spot supply” and “strengthen the capacity for joint supply and coordinated management of storage”.
Reference is also made to the need to “accelerate the development of the nuclear of the new generation” with the little ones SMR and AMR reactors. Or “ensure stable access to critical raw materials» for example “by increasing domestic production, processing and recycling in theEU“. Or again. “Strengthen the digitalization and the adoption of advanced technologies for competitiveness» by strengthening «high-performance computing capabilities and artificial intelligence» and «supporting the development of the industry semiconductors in the’EU».
Of course, one of the thorniest – and most anticipated – steps of the Draghi report it was the one on fundingsince immense resources will be needed to finance some of the proposed measures. «If the political and institutional conditions are present, theEU should continue, based on the model of the NextGenerationEuto issue instruments of common debtwhich would be used to finance joint investment projects aimed at increasing the competitiveness and the European security“, the report reads. The logic, in any case, would not be that of debt “regardless” but of targeted action, where public leverage also serves to trigger the private investments. Recommendations in the field of defense – among the most anticipated of the report – speak quite clearly.
The document in fact proposes to “strengthen the industrial and technological base of the European defense to meet new needs», «increasing the aggregation of demand among the Member States and promoting the standardization“. But since the problem lies in the low volumes of Research and Development (R&D) – here in 2022 theEU invested 9.5 billion euros compared to 140 billion dollars of United States – the idea would be to concentrate the funding on “joint initiatives”, through “new dual-use programmes” and “European projects of defense of mutual interest”, so as to organize “the necessary industrial cooperation”.