The Draghi Report: A Vision for Europe's Future Amid Global Challenges

In a recent article, The Telegraph addressed the EU's diverse economic growth strategies, including an analysis of the latest Draghi Report.

The article underscores the EU's persistent difficulties in attaining sustainable economic growth despite implementing numerous strategies and initiatives. Furthermore, it addresses the broader implications for the EU's global economic standing and the potential impact on the UK.

David Frost, former Chief Negotiator for Brexit and subsequently a Cabinet minister under the Boris Johnson government from 2019 to 2021, concluded the argument as follows: “Brexit is failing,” say know-nothing commentators here. In fact, if anything is failing it’s the Monnet method, the EU institutions, and the existing European elites who prop them up. They’ve run out of the road. They don’t know how to proceed. Unless they can find it in themselves to abandon much of what they have come to believe, they will, sooner or later, be left behind by history – and by the rest of the world, too.

The NAVI Research Institute posed a question to Prof. Mark Eyskens, a distinguished Belgian economist, academic, and politician, regarding the points raised in this article, with a particular focus on the trajectory of the EU's economic policies and their impact on the European autonomy and defense industry.

Here is the answer:

The Draghi report is crucial because it comes at a time when the European Union is confronted with an exceptional accumulation of challenges and problems. There is global warming and almost daily natural disasters, the control of immigration in Europe, the aging of the population, the financing of social security, the promotion but also the management of high-tech revolutions, the competitive struggle in a world that is globalizing and security and defense significantly updated by the war in Ukraine.

Today, the question arises of whether the European Union should not revive its vocation eighty years ago and develop a forward-looking message that shows how future generations can realize the desirability of cooperation, humanity, well-being, prosperity, creativity, and efficiency.

Mario Draghi's report is of exceptional importance because of its analysis of the problems and challenges that the European Union will face in the coming years.

However, it is even more critical because Draghi proposes a whole series of measures that the European Union's policies must urgently take and implement. He proposes, among other things, to make an amount of approximately 800 billion euros available every year for a forward-looking industrial policy. Competitiveness needs to be strengthened, and Europe needs to do more to develop innovative technologies. The European budget must be increased - the current 1.1% is ridiculously low - in the context of a fully-fledged European fiscal policy and a European debt policy.? However, the problem of decision-making within the European Union arises, where essential problems still require unanimity in the European Council. Consideration should be given to abolishing unanimity and generalizing Qualified Majority Voting.

Draghi is aware that the European Union urgently needs a more robust and innovative defense policy. And not only because of the threat that arises from Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The consequences of recent scientific and technological innovations are causing a de facto World War of a new type called cyberwar, which aims at hacking information systems and disrupting, among others, European security systems.

A new European defense policy must, of course, not only be discussed with NATO partners but also be integrated into the NATO defense system.?

It is highly desirable that the European policy bodies consider these important Draghi proposals and examine to what extent and how they can be achieved.

The Earth is still round and challenging, but the world of Humans has become flat and liquid because of technologically driven globalization. Our societies are subject to colossal mutations in all domains caused by revolutionary scientific discoveries and technological innovations. The prevailing impression is that a new type of Human is in the making, complementary to the applications of artificial intelligence, bioengineering, robotics, and so on.? Scientists speak of a new epoch in the development of the Earth, namely the Anthropocene, gradually inhabited by trans humans. Experience has shown that what seems like science fiction today can become reality tomorrow. It goes without saying that these kinds of perspectives raise colossal ethical questions about the meaning of being human.??

Today is high time to take up our civilizing responsibility. ?

Professor Mark Eyskens??

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