EditDraghi’s new EU reform group faces criticism over lack of Eastern European voices
The Rhine Group initiative comes at a time when the international economic environment has become considerably less favourable to Europe
Two years after Mario Draghi warned that Europe was falling behind on investment, productivity and technology, his new Rhine Group aims to turn his reform blueprint into action. But the initiative has already raised questions over the lack of Central and Eastern European voices, as if the EU hadn’t enlarged since 2004.
The Rhine Group, named after the river that crosses several of Europe’s major economies, brings together economists, entrepreneurs, academics and political figures to help translate the proposals of the 2024 Draghi report into policies that can actually be implemented.
The group leadership is co-chaired by Draghi and Patrick Collison, the Irish technology entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of payments company Stripe. Its executive director is Spanish economist Luis Garicano, a London School of Economics academic and former European Parliament member who worked with Draghi on the original report.
“The reform agenda is very stalled,” Garicano said, explaining that the group would seek to prioritise the proposals and facilitate their implementation. It will operate independently of the European institutions and plans to publish a series of documents over the coming weeks.
The European Commission tasked Draghi, then a former Italian prime minister and former ECB president, to examine the bloc’s competitiveness. His report, formally titled The Future of European Competitiveness, warned that Europe was suffering from weak investment, technological delays and declining productivity, widening the gap with the United States.
Among its recommendations were deeper European integration, particularly in capital markets and monetary union, the removal of bureaucratic barriers, and improvements in education and industrial policy.
The Rhine group brings together figures from across Western and Northern Europe, with Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and the Nordic countries among those represented, alongside members based in the UK, Switzerland and the United States. Its members include Italians such as Draghi himself, Andrea Pignataro, Lucrezia Reichlin and Francesco Giavazzi; Spaniards including Luis Garicano, Andreu Mas-Colell and Cristina Garmendia; French figures such as Bruno Le Maire, Benoît Cœuré, Xavier Niel and Philippe Aghion; and German, Dutch, Swedish, Irish and other European business and academic leaders. The only representative from the countries that joined the EU in 2004 or later among the 54 members is former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
Europe has only four of the world’s 50 largest tech companies
The Rhine Group’s founders have framed the challenge in stark terms: only four of the world’s 50 largest technology companies are European.
The group argues that Europe is weak in almost every emerging technology expected to shape the coming decades. The problem, it says, goes beyond industrial prestige or the ability to produce globally competitive companies.
A prolonged period of stagnation could undermine Europe’s ability to finance core responsibilities, including defence, public healthcare, pensions, education, climate investment and social protection.
“The stakes are existential,” the group argues in its founding statement, warning that the European growth model is fading and that the continent is increasingly dependent on external developments it cannot control.
Yet the group insists that decline is not inevitable.
“It’s not too late to change Europe’s trajectory if we take the right first steps today,” its founders say, arguing that Europe remains the world’s second-largest market and retains the capacity to compete if it can overcome the structural obstacles holding back investment, innovation and productivity.
The initiative comes at a time when the international economic environment has become considerably less favourable to Europe. The United States has become more protectionist, China has emerged as a stronger competitor and strategic dependencies in areas such as energy, technology and industry have become more exposed.
Poland’s growth raises questions for Europe’s reform agenda
The composition of the Rhine Group has also raised questions about the geographical balance of its membership. A Polish-sounding name among the members, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, is Swedish. Poland’s absence stands out in particular: its economy has grown strongly over the past decades, narrowing the gap with Western European economies and making its experience potentially relevant to the broader debate on European competitiveness.
Polish economist Marcin Piątkowski, a professor at Kozminski University, questioned why his country’s experience is not more strongly represented in the new initiative. “Europe has overlooked the evidence of its own most successful economic experiment: Poland,” Piątkowski wrote on X.
The point highlights a broader issue for the European competitiveness debate. While the Rhine Group focuses on Europe’s technological and productivity gap with the United States, Poland has been one of the EU’s fastest-growing economies over recent decades, significantly narrowing the gap with Western European economies.
The country’s transformation since the end of communism has been built on integration into the EU single market, foreign investment, industrial expansion and rising productivity. Its experience could therefore offer lessons for the broader European debate about how to generate growth and investment.
From diagnosis to implementation
The Rhine Group is explicitly designed to address what its founders see as the main weakness of the Draghi report: the difficulty of turning a broad diagnosis into political action. His 2024 report contained more than 170 proposals covering energy, industry, defence, digital infrastructure, capital markets and productivity. It quickly became one of the key reference points in the EU debate over competitiveness.
But implementation has lagged behind the ambition of the recommendations.
The new group aims to bridge the gap between research and policymaking, bringing together people from government, academia, finance, industry and technology. Its members are expected to meet at least once a year to agree on proposals that will then be developed through further work by outside experts.
The group draws inspiration from the Aspen Economic Strategy Group in the United States, established by former US Treasury secretaries Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner with former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke. That initiative sought to develop evidence-based solutions to major economic challenges.
The very name “Rhine Group” suggests an initiative rooted in older Europe, one that may implicitly invite the newer members of the continent to form their own equivalent – maybe a Danube Group?
An announcement: under the leadership of Mario Draghi, @zomriofficial, @Der_Postillon and @DiePressecom we have set up the Danube Group: memers, videomakers, lazybones and slackers pushing European memes in the Draghi agenda. Other EU countries are welcome to contribute.
— DG MEME 🇪🇺 (@meme_ec) August 25, 2026
Sources: rhinegroup.eu, ilsole24ore.com, ANSA, biznes.interia.pl, El Pais
Caption: Former President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi poses on balcony after receiving the Charlemagne Prize (Karlspreis) during the award ceremony in the town hall of Aachen, Germany, 14 May 2026. According to the Board of the Charlemagne Prize, Professor Mario Draghi is being honored for his outstanding contributions to European integration and for his decisive role in stabilizing and further developing the European Economic and Monetary Union. EPA/CHRISTOPHER NEUNDORF
Updated: August 25, 2026 - 15:57
