UThe Italian offensive is underway to save Europe and it is welcome. The same week saw two former presidents of the Italian council, known for their European commitment, Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi, formulate bold proposals aimed at allowing the European Union (EU) to resist economic decline in the face of American powers. and Chinese.
In a speech given on Tuesday April 16 to members of a conference on social rights in La Hulpe, Belgium, Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), pleaded for a ” radical change “ and an “redefinition of our Union which is no less ambitious than the momentum of the founding fathers which led to the Economic Community of Coal and Steel seventy years ago”.
Mr. Draghi, who is due to submit a report on Europe’s competitiveness in June, believes that the EU as it was designed is not equipped to face powers like the United States and China. “Our organization, our decision-making and financing processes are made for yesterday’s world”he said, a world “before Covid, before Ukraine, before the conflagration in the Middle East, before the return of great power rivalry”. If it does not want to be absorbed, the EU must equip itself with instruments adapted to the world “today and tomorrow”.
Fragmentation of the European internal market
This is also the objective of Enrico Letta, who presented, on Thursday April 18, to the leaders of the Twenty-Seven meeting in Brussels the report on the reform of the internal market for which he was tasked by the Commission. For the former social democratic prime minister, the single European market, designed at a time “where the great European countries were the great countries of the world”stayed “very XXe century “ while the balances of the world have been upset.
If it remains stuck in its original construction, Europe will continue to fall behind China and the United States, inexorably. Today, the fragmentation of the European internal market not only prevents it from competing with the major global economic powers but creates jobs abroad and makes European companies prey to these powers.
Mr Letta made several proposals to encourage the creation of European champions in the telecoms, energy and finance sectors. One of the essential instruments to take this step is the integration of capital markets at the level of the European Union – a project undertaken ten years ago. An integrated capital market, as is the case in the United States, would make it possible to mobilize the European surplus of private savings to finance long-term investment in the green and digital transition.
At the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron fought to give momentum to the Capital Markets Union and championed the idea of launching a capital markets union. European savings. This joint Franco-German effort must be welcomed. The ace ! It encountered resistance from a dozen member states, led by Luxembourg and Ireland, who were stuck on their national power of financial supervision and their tax regimes. The subject must come back to the table in June.
We must hope that the Draghi report will then produce the essential effect of an electric shock to convince the recalcitrant countries of the scale of the challenge posed to Europe.