Draghi: "The urgency of a new Europe for young people"

"The European Union is an experiment with few precedents in human history. A continent marked for centuries by divisions and wars has embarked on a path of unity and peace to ensure prosperity and well-being for its citizens. Europe today is a collection of democracies, each with its own national identity, but all committed to ensuring that this collection itself possesses an identity—a European one." This was written by former Prime Minister Mario Draghi in an article under his name in *Il Messaggero*. "Acting together," he adds, "has become a necessary condition for facing competition from the other great powers of the world, but also for surviving with those values that over the years have come to define this common identity. The challenge for institutions—governments, the European Commission, parliaments—is to ensure that this model remains sustainable and capable of evolving alongside our societies. Europe must rediscover its capacity to grow." The report 'The Future of European Competitiveness,' submitted to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, arises, above all, from this urgency, he writes further, "as do the discussions that have accompanied it." "To succeed in competing with the rest of the world," Draghi continues, "means ensuring that young Europeans and those Europeans not yet born have the same rights, the same protections, and the same opportunities that have defined our model in recent decades. It is a matter of social justice, of collective values, of European identity. But it also means being able to defend our borders and our political independence, our freedom." "The challenges facing Europe—technological, demographic, geopolitical—are extraordinary. But equally extraordinary is the ambition that has always characterized the European project. Its conception set aside centuries of massacres and conflicts. Its realization overcame enormous political, economic, and social obstacles. Today, there is still much to be done to make Europe capable of responding to the needs of its citizens. The question we must ask ourselves is whether we still share the same ambition as in the recent past," Draghi concludes. All rights reserved © Copyright ANSA