Saving Europe "whatever it takes": mission impossible? 

Sams Dine SY*
11/05/2024

The Draghi Report is commissioned by the European Commission, accessible from November 2023 but only available since September 2024. In the meantime, leaks warn of his ambition to go far beyond the Marshall Plan of the 1950s and the Delors Programme (EMU, 1990). It is Europe that still needs to be saved since the end of the tripolar system and the war in Ukraine have exposed it to the risk of downgrading and plunged the world into the "Tower of Confusion". Hence the idea of a Master Plan of Transformation throwing into oblivion the two precedents of the 50s and 90s, since it simply aims to make the EU a first-mover by trail effect as a fallout of a new type of policy process in the European Union.

While the injunction was able to achieve consensus, the required budget, estimated at at least €800 billion per year (about 4.5% of the EU's GDP), is controversial. I might as well admit "Mission Impossible!". Less because of the financial envelope required than because of the reference to a static and unrealistic model of the "Great Transformation" type (K. Polyani, 1944) based moreover on a single cycle articulated with a sequential policy cycle. It is as if no lessons have been learned from past experiences.

The immediate effect was the postponement of the publication of the report under the pretext: "so as not to influence the European elections in June" and then "still at the drafting stage" even though it is July. Refusing the citizens' debate discredits this relationship: the European Union would therefore be an aggregate of polyarchies (R. Dahl 1962. Who Governs? New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press) in the hands of an epistocracy (M. Lucky). A first limitation that questions its relevance.

The publication of the report almost a year late reveals an ambition limited to a simple project of the European Commission still at the discussion stage. He advocates for three major policy transformations to close the innovation gap, execute a decarbonization and competitiveness plan, increased security and reduced dependence.

Master Plan is a framework document that sheds light on the options chosen to place the entity in a transformation dynamic. Europe has the equivalent with the EMU Programme or Delors Report, supplemented by an evaluation of its benefits and costs in 1990. This programme is summarised in a graph or "detailed schema of the effectsof EMU" articulating different types of change in order:

- systemic around the single currency, the single market and the tripolar international system;
- politics with economic policy and monetary policy;
- behaviour of economic agents;
- for a final economic impact defined in terms of microeconomic efficiency, macroeconomic stability and regional equity.
It also points the way forward to restore competitiveness through the allocative efficiency of the growth path (OECD Technology & Economics: TEP 1992: Determining Relationships, 1992).
However, the approach adopted in 1990 does not bother to define the changes in terms of transformation cycles. It therefore remained in a traditional model of addition of cycles and sequential articulation: a model that was very widespread at that time, except that it did not take into account the complexity of the unit of analysis (a community of states) and the domains concerned (the attributes of sovereignty). Hence the feeling of disappointment and frustration widely shared three decades later and the European Commission's order for a real Master Plan as a break with this approach.

The harsh sentence pronounced by the Draghi report does not, however, reflect the seriousness of the situation since it is part of the same reference framework and reduces the quality of a Master Plan to its advantages and costs according to the classic economic approach.

Limiting European competitiveness to its industrial dimension and a challenge is a mistake for such a composite area. Its future does not only make it a monetary issue - the EU's sole attribute of sovereignty - especially since its fate is at the heart of the new kind of war underway. Like Europe, the United States in turn feels ill-prepared in the face of a double threat from enemies (China, Russia) and "an Axe of Growing Malign Partners" (the rest of the world, ROW). The response of the United States to the report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States NDS (Final report to Congress; July 2024) still remains secret, even if the hypothesis of an upcoming "reproductive revolution" fomented by Darpa around the Crypto Quantum can no longer be ruled out. The emerging scenario would combine a global "Crypto Belt" that would throw the Belt Road into oblivion, combined with a "ScalpFlation" policy that would reduce the world to a state of hibernation. If such a scenario becomes clearer, the Euro would then be the main victim, reducing the Draghi report to an anecdote since it takes its stability for granted.
Master Plan must result in a triple capacity for projection, adoption and absorption by transforming a vision into reality while building a habitat of the future. It can therefore be assessed in the following terms:
- dynamic efficiency of growth paths for competitiveness and transformation of Europe into a first-mover: at the heart of the report;
- robustness of the "Europe as a Federal State" vision as a global player by providing a matrix of issues/actors and a real game/goal/targets palette: partially addressed;
- anticipation of systemic shocks and radical disruptions through a range of global scenarios combining several hypotheses: ignored.

Not only does the Draghi report do less than the Delors programme, but it is just as trapped as the latter in the stages heuristic, this royal way alone explaining the European impasse. It is therefore more of a simple project than a complete Master Plan for competitive transformation.

Hence the agonizing question...

The Draghi report is based on the absence of a single market and the questioning of the Triad to proclaim the urgent need to save the euro as the single currency before it is too late for the European Union. This objective refers to the one of 2012 when the same author added "to do whatever it takes". Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the report for undoubtedly diplomatic reasons, it nevertheless appears as an injunction through the broad outlines revealed by their author through cleverly orchestrated leaks in various media and European forums from November 2023. While the injunction seems to be a consensus, the required budget estimated at at least €800 billion per year (about 4.5% of the EU's GDP) is controversial. I might as well admit: impossible mission!. Less because of the financial envelope required than because of the reference to a static and unrealistic model of the "Great Transformation" type (K. Polyani, 1944) based moreover on a single cycle articulated with a sequential political cycle. It is as if no lessons have been learned from past experiences.

The injunction had the immediate effect of postponing its publication on the pretext: "so as not to influence the European elections in June" and then "still at the drafting stage" even though it is July. Refusing citizen debate discredits this relationship: the European Union would therefore be an aggregate of polyarchies (R. Dahl, 1962. Who Governs? New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press) in the hands of an epistocracy (M. Lucky; APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition_ Learning vs. Knowing Regimes_ Knowledge Production in Epistocracy and Democracy, 2021).

The choice of the title "future of European competitiveness" says a lot about the content of a report that refers to all the components of the Science Distance: - external or global in the long term: the future of humanity in interaction with that of Europe;
- oscillatory: the EU is a global player as a state with a robust vision or a stake through its resources;
- internal or regional in the short and medium term: the competitiveness of the European innovation system makes it a firs-mover by path dependency or a follower by locking-in.

The first explores the future of Europe as a region of the world, unlike the "Global Trends" (NICs) which plan the evolution of the world from the USA. The attentive reader will not fail to refer to the results of the previous European foresight exercises for 2010 and 2025. The report is careful not to answer the question: why is Europe incapable of anticipating global and long-term disruptions and shocks to the point of delegating its foresight to the United States? In fact, the Draghi report fits well into this scenario of "de-Westernization of the world by 2025 carried out by NIS in 1999. A scenario marked today by the race between a winged tiger, a depressed bear and a bionic bull to embody in turn the exclusive globalization inscribed in the thousand-year-old European tradition.

The second tests the robustness of the EU's vision since monetary union became a unifying theme of the one declared in the 1980s, the other two being economic union and the ECU as an international currency alongside the yen and the dollar. This issue raises questions about its fate, knowing that the Triad has been orphaned since Japan has been downgraded without being replaced. Two players – China and Russia – are described as enemies by the United States when they question the five monopolies over which its hegemony exists: innovation, control of financial flows, free access to natural resources, control of information and communication, and a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction. . The rest of the world, including Europe, is reduced to a stake, even if a few minor players are described as malign partners.

The shortcomings that make Europe a minor player must be clearly separated from those that make it an issue. However, the report mixes them up before structuring them around five building blocks to supposedly manage industrial transformation. The stationary state of the European Union makes it an issue whose direct and static effects are a multi-level governance of the Jacobin type and the segmentation of the market instead of being a single one as agreed in 1990. As a result, there is no overall strategy that should not be limited to the industrial, commercial and financial aspects.

Economic agents do not behave in the same way depending on whether Europe is a player or a stake. The transformation of their behavior does not follow from the three advocated (innovation, energy, security) nor is it sufficient to make Europe a player. A careful reading of the NDS report (2025) provides some clues about what awaits her if Eu continues to play the smart malign partner. The report carefully avoids addressing the fundamental question: why does the EU still have no vision and is content to aspire to the status of a member of a fictitious Triad?

The third focuses on the "coherence and diversity of innovation systems in Europe", "national innovation financing systems in Europe", "the future of industry in the global context", "investment, innovation and competitiveness within the Triad" and on "the competitiveness map as an avenue for growth". The attentive reader will not fail to ask: what is new since all the alerts issued during the 90s by Fast Monitor (FOP 349 and 357, 1993), OECD (1005), Merit (1993), ITPS (Eur 19032, 1999)? What about the Green Paper on Innovation (BUE, 1995) and the First Action Plan for Innovation in Europe (EC, 1997)? Initiatives and programs follow one another, so they are intertwined without any result?


However, the experience of productivity missions carried out within the framework of the Marshall Plan and at an insignificant cost should have inspired the author of the report since he aims to eclipse this historic moment. C Stoffaes even made it an invisible revolution in "The Marshall Plan and the Economic Recovery of Europe. 1991». He simply omitted to point out that while these missions covered almost every field, there were some that were totally excluded: to learn how the federal government made decisive qualitative leaps in the advent of the "American century" thanks to Policy Analysis Science and to what extent the Marshall Plan provided the opportunity to make post-war Europe the main Test-Bed without its knowledge, to enclose the nascent European policy process in the stages heuristic through a transformation model by addition of cycles. Ironically, it is the European Commission that is spreading this approach by replicating the EMU Programme in the former Soviet bloc through the Shatalin Programme in 500 days, then through UEMOA, CEMAC, ECOWAS and the African Union.

During this time, this approach was at the heart of "paradigm wars" on the distinction between what is analytical or normative, on the notion of the policy cycle and the number of stages, the multiplicity of components or streams (J. Kingdon); causal links (P. Dye; F.S. Berry; F.S. Berry; F. R. Baumgartner), the structure of networks (S. Adam), the weight of institutions (E. Olstrom).

Better still, it is still in the USA that new concepts are discreetly and in real time being experimented with behind the Crypto-Quantum Policy Analysis in interaction with Open Science around the MITRE and the Potomac Quantum Innovation Center (PQIC) which are embarking on a real Quantum Moonshot Analytics. The GAFAMs, among others, are getting involved when they try to go further around the applications of Open Science in terms of resilience modelling on the sidelines of COP28. An event that went unnoticed. Despite everything, Europe is not to be outdone when independent organizations sponsor a congress in Kigali just before, on the same theme, focusing on AI, while the latter is to Crypto Quantum what the Internet of Things was to the Internet.

In the end, the Draghi report is careful not to answer the questions that mainly refer to the three issues: why Europe is incapable
- Anticipate disruptions and shocks on a global and long-term scale,
- to have a game/goal/target palette compared to that of the other major players and
- To be part of a transformation dynamic?

However, Europe's trajectory over the past millennium alone justifies a global foresight exercise of the "World-Europe" type, for example by 2050 and based on an exploratory methodology: what has been the purpose of all these foresight exercises carried out since the 90s?

The originality and "constructive ambiguity" of the European project make it an ideal framework for the policy analysis science of the "Europe, federal ecosystem based on a constructivist epistemology: why is the Westphalian state model invented in Europe increasingly tipping over into its Jacobin foil plagued by the scourges of mediocrity and corruption?

Europe's low competitiveness makes it a rich unit of analysis that is part of a transformative ontology: why this lock effect that still makes it a follower despite all the initiatives and framework programmes implemented since the 90s and supposed to make it a precursor?

It is therefore as if the Draghi report condemns Europe and makes its disappearance from the world map inevitable. Also, all countries are invited to create their own Moon Shots Analytics in order to get rid of this option.