Overview

• At the Rimini Meeting, Mario Draghi said the EU has become a geopolitical bystander and urged swift action to regain influence.
• He pressed the European Commission to deliver a promised '28th regime' this year to give small firms a uniform legal status across the bloc and cut internal frictions.
• Draghi cited IMF work estimating EU labor productivity could be about 7% higher after seven years if internal barriers matched U.S. levels, compared with roughly 2% in recent years.
• He warned internal market barriers act like tariffs—about 64% on machinery and 95% on metals—raising costs and slowing procurements, including for planned defense outlays through 2031.
• Arguing only EU-level financing can match U.S. and Chinese scale, he called for common debt to fund megaprojects such as semiconductors, contrasting U.S. $30–65 billion fabs with Europe’s typical €2–3 billion national efforts.