At the Rimini Meeting the former premier warns: the EU is no longer enough for itself. Marginal in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran, he must join or will remain out of global games
A continent that for decades has mirrored in the strength of its market finds itself, in 2025, to discover that the weight of 450 million consumers is no longer enough. “This – said Mario Draghi at the Rimini meeting – will be remembered as the year in which the illusion has evaporated”.
It is the finding of those who have seen the mechanisms of global finance, European institutions and international diplomacy from within. Draghi does not speak by hearsay: his career, from the Bank of Italy to the ECB to Palazzo Chigi, has faced him with any crisis of the last twenty years. And it is precisely in this perspective that the 2025 budget defines as “bitter”.
The former premier lines the facts: resign himself to the duties imposed by the United States, the historic ally and the first commercial partner, and increase military spending according to logics dictated by the outside. “Decisions – he underlines – that perhaps we would have had to take anyway, but not so and not now”. The result is a Europe crossed by a wave of skepticism, which touches “peaks” never recorded in recent decades.
Trump’s brutal alarm clock
There is a name behind the “brutal alarm” cited by Draghi: Donald Trump. His re -election to the White House abruptly closed the time of reassurances. “The American elections have changed everything. In September 2023 – recalls Draghi – nobody perceived that things were going badly. Industry, politics and bureaucracy of Brussels lived in peace. Then the shock came”.
That blow of reality has put European fragility bare. For Draghi, the first answer must be the simplest and most difficult at the same time: “Let’s squeeze ourselves together. European states must learn to get along”. The alternative, he explains, is to remain irrelevant in a world where the powers play more and more hard games.
Common debt for strategic projects
Draghi does not just launch the alarm, but indicates a road. And the key word is “common debt”. For him he is the only tool capable of supporting truly European scale projects, too large to be financed by national budgets already burdened by constraints and debts.
Defense – especially in research and development -, energy with investments in networks and infrastructures, and disruptive technologies: they are the priorities that the former premier puts on the table. “In some sectors – he observes – the good debt is no longer possible at national level: isolated investments do not reach the size necessary to increase productivity and justify debt. Inaction is the worst enemy of Europe”.
The reasoning goes beyond the economy: Draghi closely links the financial capacity of the Union to its political survival. Without common tools, the individual states risk being crushed between geopolitical giants.
Sovereignties? A gift to the great powers
The warning against the return to national sovereignties is one of the hardest passages. “Destroying European integration to return to national sovereignty – warns – would mean exposing even more to the will of the great powers”.
In the post-pandic and post-post-Russian world of Ukraine, the rules of international trade are no longer based only on efficiency, but on strategic factors such as the safety of supplies and the control of critical resources. In this context, explains Draghi, Europe must adapt its political organization to the existential challenges that surround it. “We have to get to a consent on what it involves being European today.”
Marginal in crisis theaters
Draghi does not spare criticism of the role of the EU in the great scenarios of crisis. “Despite the greater financial contribution to the war in Ukraine and the greatest interest in a right peace, our role in negotiations was marginal”.
In the meantime, China has openly supported Russia’s war effort, ignoring European protests and using rare earth control to make dependence on Asia even more stringent.
The judgment does not change even looking at the Middle East. “We were spectators – he says – while the Iranian nuclear sites were bombarded and Gaza’s massacre intensified”. It is here that Draghi pronounces the phrase that summarizes the entire speech: “These events have done justice for any illusion that the only economic dimension is enough to have geopolitical power”.
From spectator to protagonist
The closure is an appeal that also sounds as a ultimatum. “To deal with today’s challenges, the EU must go from a spectator or supporting actor to the leading actor. He must change his political organization, inseparable from the ability to achieve economic and strategic objectives”.
For dragons, the economic strength remains a necessary, but not sufficient condition, to have geopolitical weight. 2025 thus becomes a watershed year: either Europe decides to change course and take on the leading role, or it will be destined to remain on the margins, condemned to comment on the moves of others.
