EU calls back Draghi and Letta to update their reports for a changed world

Brussels – Donald Trump’s return to power has changed the world. An obvious fact for everyone, which forced governments, economists, business leaders, scholars, and diplomats to confront a new reality, one for which, culpably, not even the European Union had prepared itself in the months preceding the U.S. elections of November 2024

Yet Trump’s (re)election was a real possibility. Many observers wrote that the tycoon would arrive at the White House for his second term better prepared and more aggressive than ever, with tried-and-tested programmes and people, rather than the improvisations he indulged in during his first term.

 Be that as it may, during Joe Biden’s presidency, the European Commission and the European Council asked two former Italian prime ministers, Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, to prepare two substantial reports on how to relaunch the Competitiveness and the Internal Market of the Union. The two studies had a major media impact, and the political world also welcomed them with expressions of interest and great esteem. That they then ended up, in practice, almost entirely ignored is another story. 

Now, however, the Commission and the Council are offering an explanation as to why those reports ended up gathering dust: they were already outdated from the start. With Trump’s arrival, the world changed radically, and so the studies on how to relaunch the Union must also be updated to reflect this new reality. 

So, at the next EU leaders’ retreat, scheduled for 12 February at Alden Biesen Castle in Belgium, an hour’s drive from Brussels, Letta and Draghi will also be invited to discuss how to plan an update. Where to begin, and which elements to consider, for a ‘Follow-up report: Tump’s return’ that might give the Union real ideas for a fresh start. Or, alternatively, for neatly filing away the new reports as well—on top of the old ones.