"Europe faces a choice between paralysis, exit or integration. Exit has been tried and has not delivered what its proponents hoped for. Paralysis is becoming untenable as we slide towards greater anxiety and insecurity. So, integration is our only hope left."
Mario Draghi said that in September 2024, when he presented his report on European competitiveness to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Two years on, with the euro at a 17-month low against the dollar and bond markets testing the weakest links in the single currency, the question is which of his three options the EU is actually choosing.
EPIC's Draghi Implementation Index, published at draghiwatch.eu, tracks how many of the 383 recommendations in the Draghi Report have become binding EU law. It uses a strict test: only adopted legal acts count, and progress is judged measure by measure.
In its July 2026 update, EPIC puts the strict index at 15.7%, or 60 of 383 recommendations. Add the ones that are partly implemented and the figure rises to 41.3%, or 158 of 383. The path since the index launched in September 2025 runs from 11.2% to 15.1% in the January 2026 interim audit to 15.7% in July for the strict measure, and from 31.4% to 38.9% to 41.3% for the combined one.
The trend is the point. Between January and July 2026 the strict index moved by 0.6 percentage points and the combined index by 2.4. In the first four months it had gained 3.9 and 7.5 points respectively.
EPIC's analysts argue the EU is neither paralysed nor fully integrating. It is choosing selectively. The strongest July 2026 movements were security-driven: the phase-out of Russian gas, defence finance, steel overcapacity safeguards and the use of external economic leverage. The update puts it bluntly: "Implementation succeeds where pressure is highest."
The other half of the finding is less comfortable. Most of the new progress consists of frameworks, authorisations, monitoring systems and review obligations. EPIC says these are legally durable but "do not yet amount to the system-wide execution envisaged by Draghi". Europe, the update concludes, remains better at building legal architecture than at forcing market outcomes.
That is the paralysis Draghi warned about, in a more polite form. The EU does not stand still. It moves when a war, a trade shock or a sanctions deadline forces the issue, and it drifts when the pressure is diffuse.
EPIC does not read the numbers as a defeat. Its update notes that a significant number of files moved from untouched to in progress after the Commission put forward proposals, including digital networks, merger reform and technological-sovereignty files. These do not count in the index until they are adopted, but EPIC sees a possible acceleration before the end of the mandate.
Its headline verdict: Draghi "has won the argument". Competitiveness is now the organising language of EU politics, but "narrative momentum is still not implementation density". EPIC's recommendation is a European Competitiveness Act, a single delivery package with measurable objectives, priority files, a public scoreboard and a binding adoption calendar.
Draghi's three options were never exclusive. The EU is picking integration in the places where it is cornered and paralysis in the places where it is comfortable. That works while the shocks keep coming, which is not a plan.
The test for the next year is whether the pressure that moved gas, defence and steel can be built into the structure itself, through deadlines, scoreboards and a single delivery package, rather than waiting for the next crisis to supply it.
