Do-ers

In the same week the EU congratulated itself on winning a couple of court cases (in European courts) against Apple and Alphabet, Mario Draghi presents a report saying Europe is doomed if it sticks to regulation rather than innovation.

Draghi says that Europe must spend €800 billion a year to catch up with the US and China in digital technologies. Europe doesn’t have €800 billion so the plan would be to borrow it as a federalised debt.

“Real disposable income per capita has grown almost twice as much in the US as in Europe since 2000,” says the report .

The Italian Prime Minister pointed out: “In 1990 the EU of 12 states made up 26.5% of world GDP. Today the EU of 27 states makes up 16.1% while the US is still at 26%.”

Draghi said Europe’s finances are so perilous that it may soon have to choose between its climate, economic and foreign policy goals.

The trouble with the report is the author. If the EU had asked Jim Ratcliffe or James Dyson, Elon Musk or Tim Cook, Jack Ma or Zhan Yiming – or preferably all six of them – to write the report then there could be some use to it.

But Europe is run by thinkers – economists, political scientists, lawyers etc – and what do they know of the fire in the belly and the will to win that drive the do-ers?

In one’s bones one knows that giving the people who currently run the EU €800 billion a year to build a tech industry would accomplish sod-all.

When the political system dictates that the thinkers rule the do-ers we can’t expect much to get done.