Former prime minister and ECB governor, Mario Draghi, stated that the European Union reached a critical juncture and needed to unite to “become a state.”
Draghi, who governed Italy during the pandemic, says he is “worried” about the critical moment Europe is experiencing.
Let us hope that those founding values that brought us together will hold us together […] Today, the growth model has dissolved, and we need to reinvent a way of growing, but to do this, we need to become a State.
He is convinced that the time has come to unite and overcome the difficulties of fragmented EU rules across all sectors that slow down the EU, especially when facing emergencies. Draghi also called the EU’s market potential “too small,” adding that there “there are so many markets and therefore the small companies that are born in Europe, as soon as they grow, they sell or go to the United States.”
“We, as Europe, spend three to five times what Russia spends, and we are the second largest investor in military expenditure after the US. It is, therefore, a question of better coordination (…) It is a special moment when we have to review many of the assumptions of our being together.”
However, according to the former ECB president, the time may have come. Even if the two wars keep on going, the EU may eventually gain strength, especially as enlargement is already being discussed.
