‘We will be forced to choose’

Draghi, who is credited with bringing the eurozone back from the brink at the height of the Greek debt crisis in 2011, said there was no option but to push through dramatic reforms.

“We should abandon the illusion that only procrastination can preserve consensus,” Draghi said. “We have reached the point where, without action, we will have to either compromise our welfare, our environment or our freedom.”

At the heart of Draghi’s report is a demand for a massive private and public investment, the like of which has not been seen in Europe since the 1960s and 1970s. It would add up approximately to an additional €800 billion per year.

The increase in investment would be “unprecedented,” he said. “If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.”

Telecoms mergers

The report argues for changes in competition rules that could see some tech and defense deals get EU approval more easily. Telecoms should face lighter regulation and be helped to scale up by defining the market as EU-wide, he said.

Reviews into mergers should also take into account the “innovation part of a merger” and economic security, Draghi said.

That would be a far cry from the Commission’s decision in 2019 to block the merger of train-builders Siemens and Alstom, German and French companies, that would have created a European champion and global market leader.