At the GLOBSEC Re-Start Europe Forum, EPIC argues that the gap between European ambition and national delivery is the continent’s most underestimated competitiveness risk.
Speaking at the GLOBSEC Re-Start Europe Forum: Strategic Dialogues in Copenhagen, Krzysztof Bulski, Board Member of the European Policy Innovation Council (EPIC), challenged the prevailing framing of Europe’s competitiveness debate. The late-night panel — alongside Steffen Kampeter of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, Mario Holzner of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies and Raimond Kaljulaid a
Member of Parliament of Estonia— addressed geopolitical tension, economic disruption, and technological change as drivers of fragmentation.
Bulski redirected the diagnosis inward: the most consequential fragmentation Europe faces is not between blocs or trading partners. It is between its own institutions and its member states.
The evidence supports this reading. EPIC’s Draghi Observatory shows that only 11.2% of the Draghi Report’s 383 recommendations have been fully implemented. A further 20% show partial progress. The rest is stalled or untouched.
That gap is not accidental.
The European Union sets competitiveness agendas. National capitals decide — often tacitly — which parts to implement, which to delay, and which to discard. The proposed 28th regime illustrates this pattern. Designed to create a single legal framework for cross-border business, it is technically ready but politically adrift. Divergence between Brussels and national capitals has turned a regulatory simplification into a coordination failure.
Precaution is elevated above action. Process is mistaken for progress. The result is a system that responds to external fragmentation by deepening its internal version.
The discussion at the GLOBSEC Re-Start Europe Forum emphasised a core point: Europe cannot credibly address global fragmentation while failing to align its own institutions around delivery.
If Europe wants competitiveness to be more than a recurring agenda item, it must close the gap that matters most — not the one between continents, but the one between ambition and execution.
