Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, who was re-elected for a second five-year time period in July, tasked Mr Draghi – a former Italian prime minister – with authoring the evaluate final yr.
The report was drawn up by a small workforce in a secretive ambiance, and anticipation for its publication grew in Brussels after its launch was delayed by a number of months.
The spending suggestions within the report are described as “unprecedented”. They’re equal to five% of the bloc’s GDP, and greater than double the post-World Struggle Two Marshall Plan.
With out additional funding, the EU can be unable to finance its social mannequin and must “cut back some, if not all, of [its] ambitions”, the report warned.
Talking in Brussels following its publication, Mr Draghi stated: “For the primary time for the reason that Chilly Struggle, we should genuinely worry for our self-preservation and the rationale for a unified response has by no means been so compelling.”
The report highlighted productiveness – the quantity of products and providers produced from a given stage of assets and labour – as a specific downside for the EU.
Sluggish development has left European households paying the worth, with residing requirements rising rather more slowly on this aspect of the Atlantic, it discovered.
Mr Draghi additionally stated Europe isn’t innovating quick sufficient, evaluating it unfavourably to the US, which has turn into a house to a number of trillion-dollar tech giants.
He stated Europe “largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the web” and has turn into “caught” in a static industrial construction, with few new firms rising.
It stated revolutionary firms favour transferring overseas, enticed by higher funding and fewer regulation.
The report additionally stated the EU is dealing with a stern risk from state-sponsored Chinese language firms because it tries to determine itself in rising industries like electrical automobiles and inexperienced expertise.
It units out 170 proposals on reducing regulation, bettering decision-making and growing cooperation between nationwide governments.
Chatting with the BBC, Lorenzo Codogno, a visiting professor on the London College of Economics and former head of the Italian treasury, warned that gathering the mandatory political assist to implement the suggestions of Mr Draghi’s “provocative and daring” report can be “extraordinarily difficult”.
Veiled criticism of the report emerged quickly after its publication, with German Finance Minister Christian Lindner saying EU joint borrowing wouldn’t clear up structural issues, and that the primary downside was not an absence of subsidies, however paperwork and a deliberate financial system.