Issue Lack of focus, dispersed spending and weak coordination as root causes of EU underperformance

Summary

Draghi identifies three reasons why the EU achieves less than it could as a union. The first is a lack of focus: common goals are declared without clear priorities or instruments, and the Union keeps adding regulatory burdens even though more than 60 percent of EU firms see regulation as an obstacle to investment. An unfinished single market also pushes high-growth firms abroad, which in turn holds back the development of capital markets. The second is wasted common resources, because substantial collective spending is split across countries and instruments, so that joint procurement made up less than 20 percent of defence equipment spending in 2022 and only 10 percent of public research and innovation spending is executed at EU level. The third is poor coordination, since complex governance leaves the EU without the integrated fiscal, trade and foreign-economic strategies used by the United States and China. An average of 19 months from a Commission proposal to the signing of a law, together with the proliferation of rules, is cited as evidence.