| During the public presentation of his long-awaited report on the future of Europe’s competitiveness earlier on Monday (9 September), Mario Draghi said that the “essence” of the report could be summed up in just two words, “urgency and concreteness”. The urgency of the report – and Europe’s current economic problems – cannot be disputed. The Italian technocrat lays out in painstaking detail the “existential challenge” posed by Europe’s weak growth rate, which is caused by (among other things) lagging productivity, high energy prices, a severe lack of investment, insufficiently integrated capital markets, and a scarcity of skilled workers. Many of the policy proposals in his 400-page report are also reasonably concrete, especially as they concern the energy sector. (For instance, he calls for the creation of a new EU legal framework that would override national law for cross-border energy grids.) When it comes to the most ‘controversial’ policy proposals, however, Draghi is often surprisingly vague, or cautious, in a way that makes his specific recommendations difficult to explain. Common borrowing On the (deeply) politically divisive issue of how to finance the “massive investments” of up to €800 billion required to facilitate the green and digital transition, and boost defence spending, Draghi was exceedingly cautious. A new joint debt at the EU level was called for, but only “if the political and institutional conditions are in place,” he said Of course, it is hard to imagine that fiscally hawkish countries like the Netherlands and Germany would ever consider the “political conditions” to be met. | 