"Europe's fundamental values are prosperity, fairness, freedom, peace and democracy in a sustainable environment. The EU exists to ensure that Europeans can always benefit from these fundamental rights. If Europe is no longer able to guarantee them, it will have lost its reason to exist . The only way to meet this challenge is to grow and become more productive, while preserving our values of fairness and social inclusion . The only way to become more productive is for Europe to change fundamentally."

Thus Mario Draghi , in his Report on the Future of the European Union, where he also underlines that «productivity is an existential challenge for the EU».

"The financial needs of the EU to achieve its objectives are enormous," reads the report presented in Brussels by the former Prime Minister and former head of the ECB, "and to achieve the objectives , at least 750-800 billion euros of additional annual investments are needed, equal to 4.4-4.7% of the EU's GDP in 2023."

"To make a comparison," Draghi writes in the dossier, "the investments of the Marshall Plan in the period 1948-51 were equivalent to 1-2% of the EU's GDP."

Again, Draghi writes, "so far, many efforts to deepen European integration among Member States have been hampered by unanimity voting. All possibilities offered by the EU Treaties to extend qualified majority voting should therefore be exploited."

Qualified majority voting, the former Prime Minister stresses, should be extended to more areas and in cases of deadlock it is necessary to resort to "enhanced cooperation".

Draghi also highlighted the need for a greater weight of the EU in foreign policy, with regard to defense but also and above all at the economic level, to recover competitiveness with respect to the USA and China and to arrive as soon as possible to express a community "governance" capable of making the best decisions for the collective good.