In Brussels, the talk of the town is a report on the future of European competitiveness, calling for fundamental economic reforms to avoid a “slow agony” for the European economy. The report, by former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, is a “door stopper” of 400 pages, including both broad messages as well as hundreds of detailed recommendations.
The starting point of the report is the weakness of innovation in the EU. It lays out the lamentable state of Europe’s high-tech industries. Draghi recognises that European enterprises are caught in a “middle-tech trap” – dependence on mid-tech industries like car-making that tend to offer less growth potential than their high-tech counterparts.
