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Commentary

The Draghi plan: A European proposal that forgets Europe

The Draghi plan looks to the U.S. as a model, and herein lies the first and perhaps biggest substantive problem. It’s a blueprint for Europe which features the absence of none other than Europe itself, both in its institutional and in its civic and cultural dimensions.

The Draghi plan: A European proposal that forgets Europe
Filippo Barbera
4 min read

In one of his essays, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges described a fictional encyclopedia in which “animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (I) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.”

In the preface to his 1966 book The Order of Things, the French philosopher Michel Foucault said that he had been inspired to write that work by this passage by Borges and the sense of comic disorientation it had induced in him.

Entirely similar is the puzzlement one inevitably falls into when trying to classify the reactions to the report entitled The Future of European Competitiveness, known as the “Draghi Plan.” The reactions can be divided into: a) enthusiastic because Draghi wrote it; b) disparaging because Draghi wrote it; c) stopping at the title; d) failing to read the title; e) included in the present classification; f) fit to be read on a mountaintop; and g) looking like even more categories from afar.

Fortunately, there are still those who take the role of informed criticism seriously, putting their sharp interpretive acuity to work in balancing and weighing the proposals which deserve to be taken seriously – and those in the report certainly do. By default, rabid fans and detractors alike share the terrible flaw of not taking the proposals they love or hate seriously. Text is reduced to the realm of pre-text, without taking the risk of delving deep into the content, and thus without putting oneself at risk in terms of one's identity and beliefs. This used to be one of the roles of political parties and the environments surrounding them, back when they still existed.

Fortunately, as we said, there are still those who are willing to take up this role. This is the case with the Inequality and Diversity Forum, which has published a minute and in-depth analysis to the Draghi Report. The Forum's message is clear and direct: in order to properly assess the report, one must not stop in one’s tracks at the “big distraction” – the €800 billion per year in spending that the Plan proposes – which has managed to derail both the Plan’s fans and its critics: “It's back to big spending,” “a taboo has been broken,” “the sanctity of austerity is over,” are some of the reactions.

First of all, the Plan is marred by a serious problem of methodology, and this is precisely because it was taken largely as a given by the institutional, political and administrative machinery of the Commission, without a discussion in the European Parliament or in other institutions of the Union. This absence of institutional dialogue is in tune with a well-defined strategy that becomes visible only by studying the document. It’s not, in fact, just a technocratic project of “actions without institutions”; instead of a technocrat’s shopping list, it offers a political menu, with an attached cookbook, meant for a dinner party to which only a highly selective few are invited.

The plan looks to the U.S. as a model, and herein lies the first and perhaps biggest substantive problem highlighted by the Forum's analysis. Its choice is to take the U.S. as the gold standard, but without addressing that model’s economic and social fragility and – most importantly – with a great disregard for the particular core values and strengths of the European Union. This is the paradox of the Draghi Plan: a blueprint for Europe which features the absence of none other than Europe itself, both in its institutional and in its civic and cultural dimensions. 

Second, the Plan is built on an untenable and truly outdated presupposition of technological neutrality that would leave the choice of technologies and their use to the market alone. This position is accompanied by a failure to analyze what would be best for Europe in the current unstable geopolitical situation, as well as a merely ancillary – if not entirely residual – role for the social dimension.

The Forum argues that these limitations end up shaping the remedies proposed by the Plan, while openly acknowledging that it offers good particular ideas in individual areas. However, they are all embedded within a strategy that would harm Europe if implemented.

The consequences of the Plan would encourage a greater concentration of economic and political power, exacerbate the trends already underway toward de-democratization, increase inequality, widen the gap between the Union and the aspirations and ideas of society and individuals, and relegate the EU to a rigidly predetermined position in international relations, despite a global context that also requires a relationship with those who are clamorously absent from the Plan: the Global South and Africa.

The posture it proposes is blind to the rift between the environment, economy and society that we must currently face in the context of the current polycrisis; it is as if we were still living in the 1980s-90s. Thus, the Plan comes from a moment frozen in time, looking back to the past and seeing the future only through the distorting lens of the U.S. model. It is a plan that forgets the differences specific to Europe, perhaps because – while it can’t say it directly – it no longer believes in Europe after all.


Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-piano-draghi-se-leuropeista-dimentica-leuropa on 2024-10-27
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