Business & Economy

Sep 8, 2026

Why the Single Market never gets finished: EPIC's half-filled ledger

EPIC's July 2026 report on Single Market fragmentation names the structural reason integration stalls: its gains are diffuse and long-term, while protection's gains are local, immediate and organised. This week's 'Made in Europe' push shows the same asymmetry at EU level.

Business & Economy

Sep 2, 2026

Defence delivery doubled. Pharma and space did not move.

EPIC's Draghi Implementation Index recorded defence jumping from 35.7% to 78.6% in four months. Over the same window pharmaceuticals and space stayed flat at roughly 27.8% — and space is a security file.

Business & Economy

Sep 1, 2026

Europe's cheapest single-market fix is the one that keeps failing

Mutual recognition needs no new law — only that a customs officer or an inspector applies a principle in force since 1979. It is the least expensive integration tool the EU owns, and one of the least effective. A Brussels think tank says nobody has ever measured what fixing it would be worth.

Business & Economy

Aug 31, 2026

Draghi's capital-market warning is the one the EU still hasn't legislated

EPIC's Draghi Implementation Index shows the EU delivering fastest where competitiveness meets security and slowest where it has to force market outcomes. Capital markets sit at the slow end, and the Savings and Investments Union's own 2026 workplan explains why.

Business & Economy

Aug 29, 2026

Europe has learnt to price its own paperwork, not its market

The Commission says it has cut about EUR 18bn of the EUR 37.5bn in recurring red tape it promised to remove by 2029. That precision makes the number nobody has produced — what completing the single market would be worth — look stranger, not smaller.

Business & Economy

Aug 29, 2026

Merz gathers the frugals in Berlin to cut the EU budget down to size

The Commission wants two trillion euros for 2028 to 2034. Berlin wants four hundred billion cut, and has invited the EU's other net contributors to lunch to say so together.