“For years the European Union believed that the economic dimension, with 450 million consumers, brought with it geopolitical power and influence in international trade relations. This year will be remembered as the year in which this illusion evaporated”. This was expressed by the former Prime Minister Mario Draghi in his speech at the Rimini Meeting.

Here are the main messages delivered by Draghi.

“We had to resign ourselves to the tariffs imposed by our largest trading partner and long-standing ally, the United States. We were pushed by the same ally to increase military spending, a decision we might have had to make anyway, but in forms and ways that probably do not reflect Europe's interest”.

“The European Union, despite having made the largest financial contribution to the war in Ukraine, and having the greatest interest in a just peace, has so far played a rather marginal role in the peace negotiations”.

“Meanwhile, China has openly supported Russia's war effort and European protests have had little effect: China has made it clear that it does not consider Europe as an equal partner and uses its control in the field of rare earths to make our dependence increasingly binding”.

“Moreover, the EU has been a spectator even when Iranian nuclear sites were bombed and the massacre in Gaza intensified. These events have dispelled any illusion that the economic dimension alone ensured some form of geopolitical power”.

“It is therefore not surprising that skepticism towards Europe has reached new heights. But it is important to ask what is truly the object of this skepticism. In my opinion, it is not skepticism towards the values on which the European Union was founded: democracy, peace, freedom, independence, sovereignty, prosperity, fairness, and social protection, we have a social welfare system probably the most developed in the world”.

“I believe rather that the skepticism concerns the ability of the European Union to defend these values. This is partly understandable. Models of political organization, especially supra-state ones, emerge in part to solve the problems of their time. When these change so much as to make the pre-existing organization fragile and vulnerable, it must change”.

“It is clear that destroying European integration to return to national sovereignty would only expose us even more to the will of the great powers. Europe is ill-equipped in a world where geo-economics, security, and stability of supply sources rather than efficiency inspire international trade relations. Our political organization must adapt to the needs of its time when they are existential: we Europeans must reach a consensus on what this entails”.