An array of commentators from the pro- and anti-European camps are querying whether the EU is condemned to fall further behind the US (and China) - even to break up in the face of economic stagnation.
A typically astute analysis. As David notes, the Draghi report (and the earlier Letta report) has provided UvdL and the whole of the EU’a leadership, with a clear diagnosis of the Union’s economic woes and a plan for action.
But such reports are not new in Brussels. They get commissioned; they get drafted; they get launched to great fanfare; and then they quietly fade away as everyone returns to their desk and carries on largely as before.
For much of the last generation that inability to confront economic sclerosis could be largely ignored as so many of the problems these reports were highlighting were not yet a clear and present danger. Europeans might worry about pension affordability and the costs of an ageing population, but the baby boomers were largely still working; Europeans might bemoan the power of US tech companies, but they were still able to harness the day-to-day benefits in their own lives and could take solace in the fact that these businesses were located in and regulated by a country we could still see as an ally.
But the challenges Europe faces now are qualitatively different: the new technology is as likely to be Chinese as it is American; the energy and security threats are immediate, not a generation away, and devastating in their impacts.
A typically astute analysis. As David notes, the Draghi report (and the earlier Letta report) has provided UvdL and the whole of the EU’a leadership, with a clear diagnosis of the Union’s economic woes and a plan for action.
But such reports are not new in Brussels. They get commissioned; they get drafted; they get launched to great fanfare; and then they quietly fade away as everyone returns to their desk and carries on largely as before.
For much of the last generation that inability to confront economic sclerosis could be largely ignored as so many of the problems these reports were highlighting were not yet a clear and present danger. Europeans might worry about pension affordability and the costs of an ageing population, but the baby boomers were largely still working; Europeans might bemoan the power of US tech companies, but they were still able to harness the day-to-day benefits in their own lives and could take solace in the fact that these businesses were located in and regulated by a country we could still see as an ally.
But the challenges Europe faces now are qualitatively different: the new technology is as likely to be Chinese as it is American; the energy and security threats are immediate, not a generation away, and devastating in their impacts.
This time it really does feel different.
Very astute response!!