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EUROPEAN MEMBER STATES will need to “sacrifice” their relationships and reliances on multinational companies in order to boost productivity and scale in the European single market, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has said.
Draghi, an economist and former President of the European Central Bank, said individual European countries are “too small” to be able to cope with the current economic challenges and have to ditch “uncoordinated” markets to survive.
These recommendations are just a few the Italian picked out in his address to the Bruegel economic think tank in Brussels today, where he was discussing his recently published European Commission report.
The report, published earlier this month, proposed a vision for the future economic strategy of the EU – that is likely to be used as a playbook for the next European Commission – in which he called for more unity in the EU single market.
Speaking today, the economist reiterated that more needs to be done by individual member states if the EU wants to continue to deliver on its values and keep up with competitors such as the US and China.
He added that changes in the political climate have impacted efforts to increase productivity in the EU single market – meaning doing so was more important than before.
There has been some hesitancy to accept the report, notably from politicians in France, as some member states’ governments believe integrating their individual markets with European peers would not benefit citizens in the short term.
Meanwhile in Ireland, the multinational sector is a major driver in the local economy.
Draghi, however, put to the European Commission that his plan would secure the EU’s role as a major economic super power and reduce the reliance on foreign investment and multinationals.
He said the key to doing this was to integrate the single market so individual economies – like Ireland – embraced its small and medium businesses more. He also suggested that red tape and regulations are constricting local businesses’ growth.
“We save a lot. We have tons of money,” Draghi said. “What we don’t have is scale and that is hampered by cross-national boundaries and cross-national regulation.”
In his long-awaited report this month, Draghi set out that an €800 billion cash boost was needed for the European market to compete alongside competitors such as the United States and China.
Core to his report was productivity and integration, which he outlined again in Brussels today. This included recommendations to have fewer restrictions on sectors such as technology and medicine and to fund projects through common borrowing schemes.
Today Draghi added that this would have to include “trade offs” for individual markets and allow for small and medium businesses to expand into the EU.
Some plans have already been tabelled for this, such as the Capital Markets Union – which would create a more level-playing field for small businesses in Europe to avail of investment from elsewhere within the EU.
Complementing this, Draghi reasoned today that individual countries are too small to compete with larger markets by themselves.
He added that the “uncoordinated” nature of the European economic playing field, where member states have their own individual economies that trade freely between other member states, creates “fertile ground” for protectionism.
He said that countries need to focus on including their European partners instead of creating “national champions” and sacrifice local competition for state aid between indigenous businesses and multinationals for a European model instead.
Draghi added: “We must be ambitious, we want to strive for innovation.”
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There can’t be much of Gaza left at this stage
@: Blame Hamas. They just use innocent Palestinians as a way of advancing their ideological motives without any concern for people’s lives. They knew the response from Israel would bring hell on Palestine! How do you expect a nation to act if state sponsored terrorists want to destroy them!?
@Sam Walsh: Britain managed not to carpet bomb Ireland whenever the IRA carried out an atrocity – because only a psycopath would justify genocide in response to a terrorist attack. The destroying is being carried out by the country that is illegally occupying Palestine, carpet bombing civilians with weapons & propaganda supplied by the EU/US.
I can show you multiple article of IDF raping Palestinian prisoners, show me what your claim is based on. Mainstream media have published a trove of unsubstantiated claims to justify carpet bombing civilians – there us no excuse for carpet bombing civilians
https://www.cair.com/cair_in_the_news/israeli-guards-rape-palestinian-women/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna72871
Hamas are evil but the IDF are even worse.
Oh you’re right, let’s just slaughter them all so! What a pathetic attempt to use the LGBTQ+ community to justify genocide.
Your question is absolutely irrelevant to the situation and is a very bad attempt at dehumanising the Palestinian people, a page right out of the Israeli playbook. Have a read of the below, you might educate yourself but I doubt it.
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232088
Ok convince me. You say it’s a load of leftist nonsense, so show me the evidence to prove it. You made a statement, I disagreed and showed evidence to back up my point. Now it’s your turn. Convince me.
@kerrill thornhill: Clearly you’ve never even heard of the Belfast Blitz of WWII. Try looking it up on Wikipedia.
When half of Belfast was being evacuated and flattened by the Luftwaffe, city defenders were afraid to fire on the bombers lest they hit the RAF – who had apparently taken that weekend off and never turned up.
Unlike the Irish Fire Brigade who crossed the border to help people.
Ireland is a neutral country. Try to remember that.
Yes there are hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community in Palestine, just as there are in Israel and many other countries.
https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/article-734812
Yes there are morality police deployed by hamas, as there are groups in Israel that do the same:
https://dbpedia.org/page/Mishmeret_tzniyut
More lefty nonsense?
@kerrill thornhill: You’re telling me the reason Israel is bombing Palestine is because of “Propaganda supplied from the US/EU”?! And not because Hamas just slaughtered the most Jews since the holocaust in one of the greatest terrorist attacks ever, including Irish citizens. I love your great comparison of Hamas and the IRA (provos), perhaps the reason why Ireland wasn’t carpet bombed was because the IRA didn’t live in such a densely populated area and also the IRA didn’t purposely use human shields. The hypocrisy from pro-Palestinians is hilarious, they expect Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East to be destroyed even though it’s ancient Jewish land and Jews have always been persecuted, Israel is tiny sliver of land in the Middle East. Islamist terrorism sympathisers are a plague.
@Sam Walsh: Replace democracy with fascist theocracy.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-10-03/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israeli-neo-fascism-threatens-israelis-and-palestinians-alike/0000018a-f6a1-d12f-afbf-f7f5e33e0000
@Rochie1508: I didn’t think we were discussing these topics. Also if you want to converse with me, don’t send a link in which I cannot copy nor paste.
@Sam Walsh: That’s how arguments work, I make a statement and back it up with examples and then you do the same! Your old imperialist argument of Jews being entitled to the land is tired and jaded and shows your true colours. Even the Orthodox population of Israel can’t stand the zionists.
https://youtube.com/shorts/V6qS3B7onec?si=Y2M-O9BQUjWrPMyv
The world is slowly but surely waking up to the aggressive hate speech and ott outrage spouted by Israeli officials. The unwarranted attack on Antony Guterres was especially heinous and uncalled for.
You coming accross as quite the nut job. I have worked with dozens of Palestinians and Muslims, many of them are gay – they are no different than us. The idea of you playing this card to justify genocide is quite insane. Did you know homesexuality was illegal in ireland until 1993? Would a sane person have used this as an excuse for Britain to carpet bomb Dublin during the troubles…. your morality is perverse!
@Rochie1508: The entirety of the Middle East equates to an area of over 5 millions square miles, the area of Israel is just over 8 thousand square miles. It so happens to be that those 8 thousand square metres represents the most democratic and least barbaric society in the Middle East. You say Israel is an imperialist state, if that’s the case then isn’t every state imperialist as there has always been transfer of land through means of conflict etc. It is totally accurate to say current day Israel used to be Jewish land, the kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah go back to 2,000 BCE, and this isn’t just document through secondary sources, but also archeological evidence. I’m not going to pretend that Israel is perfect, Palestinians have had a rough time, but Israel aren’t the baddies.
@Sam Walsh: Your lies are absolutely laughable. Israel not barbaric? Please.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1782010
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_war_crimes_against_Israel
You are absolutely correct, it USED to be the land of Judea, 2000 years ago. Over the centuries Islam spread to the area but up to the early 20th century Jews and Muslims lived happily together, granted under Ottoman rule. Imagine someone came to your home, told you this was my ancestors house 2000 years ago you need to get out. Then the police arrive and forcibly remove you and if you fight back you get shot. Does that sound fair? Of course not! Your logic is twisted beyond belief!
Leave it to Israel to be one of the few nations capable of even greater atrocities than October 7th, they have shown the world they are worse than Hamas. They will never have peace.
Back in the real world, 3000 Palestinian children were killed by carpet bombing a concentration camp, over 9000 civilians. Your still spouting the lie that Hamas beheaded kids & other atrocity porn that has been amplified relentlessly to dehumanise Palestinians and justify genocide. Here you are justifying a real live genocide, while insisting Palestinians/Hamas are the savages – do you work for punch magazine?
@Allo Allo: Israel exaggerated the 7th of October Israeli deaths, the true death toll is closer to 700 than 1400 and about half of the Israeli deaths were soldiers and police, the IDF killed more of their own people than Hamas, Israel has a procedure to stop soldiers being captured, search for “the Hannibal Directive”.
Hamas are no angels and they murdered Israeli civilians on the day but they aren’t ISIS.
But most importantly, the people of Gaza are not Hamas.
@Allo Allo: So far they’ve killed more UN staff than Hamas commanders.
@: the fact you think Palestine/Isreal is right wing/left wing says more about your intelligence to be honest
You should read a book called ‘the great delusion’ by John Mearsheimer, the Liberal left as you call it are the main backers of zionism and ‘liberal hegemony’. As someone who works with dozens of Arabs/ Muslims (even gay ones!!!) from multiple countries – your description above is based on your own hatred and racism, not reality. No one ever chants push Jews to the sea, this is a racist trope – they chant Palestine will be free. If you’re worried about hostages, what’s your opinion on the >5000 Palestinians detained without trial?
A dating coach, what next, a divorce coach?
@Pato: they are around already in the states
@Pato: those people who can’t find someone, who struggle for the self confidence, the self belief to be able to find themselves a relationship.. should they just give up.. or can someone help.
We all need help in different ways. I know someone who used a dating coach and it changed their life.
Years ago we would have been skeptical of online dating..
Everyone deserves a chance at having someone.
And why not a divorce coach. It’s a lot to go through. Some people never recover and never find their way back into their life
Take a good close look at what’s happening to innocent Palestinians. You won’t read this in the IDF press releases that pass for journalism: https://twitter.com/PalBint/status/1717953561194078517?t=MykBvZRIY5hsalmFoh3tdQ&s=19
@kerrill thornhill: I could post hundreds of these awful images – if the people being killed were ‘like us’ I would not have to, because they would be plastered all over the front page of every news paper. https://twitter.com/Sprinter99800/status/1718146305946439930?t=iLGgH_7H_6SDTbiqVemEcQ&s=19
@kerrill thornhill: Just horrific: https://twitter.com/chilledasad100/status/1718179900123689337?t=xWRPcS-ucggC-vlWykphRQ&s=19
Do you have children, if they died would you consider them ‘collataral damage’? You are using dehumanising psychopathic language. Israel is almost exclusively targeting and killing civilians, yet perversely insisting on the moral high ground – you’ve completely lost your mind, as have most of our journalists by silent accepting the massacre of children. Complete inhumane insanity
The irony is incredible, to me, but probably not for the author.
Then you should probably not use or listen to this load of bollix ie the journal
No name blow me u bollix of thing
@Paul Moloney: no name no answer no balls no brains
Important points for everyone and especially for those with this specific experience. Thanks for a well-written, well-researched article, Jeanne!
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