Jean-Jacques Pluchart
The end of 2025 was marked by a reminder of the concrete proposals formulated in the report led by Mario Draghi and published on 9 September 2024. This reminder is explained in particular by the implementation by the United States of an increasingly isolationist policy, which forces the European Union to finally define an industrial strategy that is both more proactive and more concerted. The debates raised on this issue in the European and national parliaments have shown – beyond certain ideological oppositions – the relevance of the recommendations made in the “Draghi report”, in order to redress the economy of the European Union and reassure its population about its future.
The report notes the growing backwardness of the Old Continent’s technology and economy since the turn of the century. The delay is considered increasingly irrefutable and irrecoverable, especially in the high-tech sectors, and especially in the field of Artificial Intelligence. According to the report, the investment required to make up for this shortfall would be around 800 billion euros per year over several years, or 4.5% of the GDP of the 27 Member States, in the form of both public and private expenditure. This amount corresponds to that of the Rearm Europe plan intended to strengthen European defence. The technological backwardness is attributable to insufficient growth, driven by a downward trend in the productivity of human and material factors. This drop-out is said to be caused by both scientific and industrial factors, such as insufficient protection of emerging industries, inadequate regulation of high-tech markets (too focused on competition), a lack of investment in the most productive sectors, a delay in the decarbonisation of factories, and above all, an impoverishment of technical skills due to the failures of R&D (in particular public) and the education system in engineering sciences. But the delay would also be due to economic and financial shortcomings, which would imply a revival of the construction of the European capital market, the establishment of a single regulation, the commitment of a European public debt dedicated to productive investments, the development of venture capital, pension funds, securitization of receivables and non-bank financing (shadow banking).
Another priority, according to the report, lies in the diversification and security of the European Union’s supplies of critical resources (rare metals, electronic chips, software, active ingredients, etc.), as well as in the strengthening of industrial value chains. However, the report recognizes that Europe has certain advantages in terms of electric mobility, micro-nuclear power, hydrogen exploitation, aeronautical construction, etc. Finally, it underlines the interest of reviving a certain economic patriotism [1] on a European scale, which presupposes the adoption of a form of protectionism through the strengthening of regulatory barriers and ecological standards penalizing certain imported products.
The reference to the Draghi report in public debates highlights the opposition between political circles, which are divided on the policies to be implemented to bridge the European gap, and economists, who are generally in favour of a return to a more dirigiste and protectionist form of the market economy. It also pits defenders of the public service against supporters of the private economy, as well as players in the high-tech sectors against those in other sectors of activity. But this reference reveals above all oppositions between the 27 Member States of the Union, some of which consider themselves victims of a ‘prisoner’s dilemma ‘.
1 L’avenir de la compétitivité européenne. Une startégie de compétitivité pour l’Europe, Mario Draghi (dir.) , 2024
2. Cf. Does economic patriotism make sense today ?, C. de Boissieu, D Chesneau (col.), Maxima, 2020