Europe after the comfortable order. Why the diagnosis is correct, while the solutions remain insufficient.

Europe has reached a real inflection point. External pressures, American subsidies, Chinese state capitalism, the fragility of supply chains, and geopolitical insecurity have eroded the premises of the old model of the free market based on rules. The diagnosis formulated around the Industrial Accelerator Act is, broadly speaking, correct. Europe can no longer rely solely on normative power; rules no longer protect industry on their own, and standards no longer automatically create competitive advantage. The problem, however, begins when this diagnosis is transformed into a political solution. The European response remains defensive, cautious, and anchored in old reflexes. The IAA is more of a recovery policy than a construction one. It seeks to save an economic order in decline, not to design a new one.

Europe is addressing a structural crisis with familiar tools: subsidies, indirect preferences, sophisticated technical criteria. All of these reduce short-term pressure but do not change the strategic position of the Union in a global economy dominated by speed, integration, and control over invisible infrastructures.

The Industrial Accelerator Act is presented as a strategic project, not just as a legislative tool. The ambition is legitimate, but the design remains incomplete. The IAA operates through incentives, filters, and conditionalities, not through the construction of common European capacities. It steers private decisions but does not create functional infrastructures that would change the deep rules of global competition. As a project, the IAA is additive, not transformative.

The first major limitation is the way Europe still understands industry. The emphasis is on physical capacities, localized production, and heavy sectors: oil, cement, batteries. Some still sigh for these products where we were once leaders in competition. They matter now too, but they no longer solely define economic power. Real control shifts towards architectures: industrial software, operating systems for energy, mobility, health, design and integration platforms. Whoever controls these nodes controls the value chain, regardless of where the factory is located. The IAA says little about this level. It protects production, not architecture; it defends localization, not function, and this is a serious strategic limitation.

Here we see a major problem that stems from the way sovereignty is understood. The IAA links it to the localization of production and the reduction of geographical dependencies, as we showed above. This is a classic industrial logic. In the current economy, power does not come from where you produce, but from what you control: industrial software, design systems, interoperability standards, operational data. The IAA protects factories but says little about controlling these functional nodes. From this point, it enters into tension with Mario Draghi's emphasis on productivity, scale, and systemic capacity.

The second problem is the European institutional culture, deeply marked by fear and risk aversion. Rules have become a mechanism for self-soothing; they reduce legal uncertainty but also reduce the capacity for action. Europe optimizes to avoid mistakes in a world that optimizes to be first. Mistakes are morally and politically sanctioned; failure is not integrated as a learning stage. In this context, any industrial policy ends up being slow, hyper-negotiated, and defensive. Without a change in mindset around risk, money and regulatory acts will not produce a strategic leap. Temporary rules, politically assumed derogations, clear mechanisms for stopping projects that do not work, without public stigmatization, are needed.

The IAA remains a policy of sophisticated control, not one of risk-taking. It does not create institutions dedicated to experimentation. It does not introduce clear mechanisms for controlled failure. It does not foresee quick exits from misguided policies. Risk is delegated to states; rules are centralized. This architecture contradicts both Draghi's call for rapid strategic investments and Letta's insistence on common instruments that reduce asymmetries.

The third underutilized area is Central and Eastern Europe. The region is treated as a productive periphery, not as a strategic reservoir. This is a major mistake. Central and Eastern Europe combines still competitive costs, skilled labor, and a greater appetite for change. Societies in this area have gone through profound historical ruptures; they are less attached to the status quo and more willing to test new solutions. Instead of being used as a testing and acceleration zone, the region is passively integrated into value chains decided elsewhere. A truly imaginative industrial policy would move pilot projects, testing hubs, flexible regulatory regimes, and common European infrastructures here. The East can become Europe's laboratory, not just its workshop.

The same logic applies to the enlargement process. Enlargement is treated almost exclusively as a source of cost and risk. This reading is limited. Properly thought out, enlargement can be a power multiplier: a larger market, additional labor force, strategic depth, and greater capacity to absorb shocks. The problem is not enlargement, but the bureaucratic way it is managed. Complete convergence is required before real integration. The result is a blockage. A different approach would privilege functional integration before formal integration, phased access to the single market, common industrial projects with candidate states. Enlargement should be done through infrastructures and ecosystems, not just through treaties and sometimes absurd rules, as was the blocking of Romania's entry into the Schengen area.

Finally, Europe's alliance strategy remains too defensive. The Union reacts to the movements of others, not building its own alliance architecture. Alliances are generally conceived as generalist, declarative, and often moral. The current world operates on selective, thematic, and asymmetric alliances: technology, value chains, standards, data. Europe would need clearer alliances, with firm conditions for access and exit, based on integration into ecosystems, not just on access to the market. An alliance is not a diplomatic gesture; it is a tool of power.

In this context, it becomes clear that Europe needs a different framework for industrial policy, one built on project, not on protection. Such a framework starts from functional sovereignty. Europe is not interested in controlling everything it produces; it is interested in controlling what makes systems work. Public policy would shift investments from isolated capacities to common systems, from origin criteria to access to functional ecosystems. Public procurement would build logical infrastructures, not just protect existing producers.

The second pillar of this model is the development of common infrastructures, not politically selected champions, as the document states. Europe is wasting time choosing winners; it wins when it reduces costs for all. European industrial cloud, open simulation and testing platforms, libraries of standardized processes, rapid certification infrastructures can favor the emergence of champions, not internal competition or favoritism. These common industrial goods do not favor one actor or another; they favor the speed of market entry. They reduce asymmetries between states and create cumulative advantage, while we only talk about competitive advantage.

The third pillar is speed. Europe does not lose on cost; it loses on time. Industrial policy would have as its central objective the reduction of the time from idea to implementation. Implicit rapid authorization, permanent testing regime, procurement oriented towards prototypes, temporary, revisable rules. Speed produces power, attracts capital, creates de facto standards.

The fourth pillar is the reconceptualization of the single market. The single market is treated as a shield, but it could function as an accelerator. Four hundred fifty million consumers mean a critical mass for testing and adoption, for coordinated launches, for synchronized public demand, evolving standards, and rapid adoption in public services. Europe could set the global pace through early adoption, not through bans and delays.

The last pillar is institutional. Europe has institutions for control; it has too few for risk management. Current power arises from the ability to try quickly and stop quickly. Controlled failure funds, industrial experimentation agencies, rapid correction mechanisms, ex post evaluation. Entities with temporary mandates, clear objectives, and automatic dissolution if results are lacking.

The Industrial Accelerator Act defends, I believe, a world that is retreating. The alternative model should build a world that is emerging. Not more protection, but more architecture. Not more control, but more capacity for design. The real question is not how much economic intervention Europe accepts.

What should Draghi and Letta say at this meeting? The IAA is partially compatible with the diagnosis of Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, but not with their underlying logic. Compatibility appears at the level of observations: Europe is losing competitiveness, the single market is fragmented, normative power is no longer sufficient in a global economy dominated by subsidies, scale, and speed. Both Draghi and Letta start from this harsh assessment of reality.

The break occurs at the moment of translating the diagnosis into political architecture. Draghi talks about productivity, growth capacity, and rapid strategic investments capable of changing the structure of the European economy, while Letta insists on strengthening the single market as a common infrastructure, not as a sum of imperfectly coordinated national policies. The IAA, in contrast, remains caught in a logic of correction and protection. It filters, conditions, and compensates, but does not build common systems that would raise the overall level of capacity.

In essence, Draghi and Letta think of European economic power as the result of an integrated architecture capable of generating scale, speed, and convergence. The IAA operates more through redistributing existing risks and advantages. It accepts intervention but places it in a defensive framework. It recognizes the problem but responds with tools that preserve structural asymmetries. From this arises the underlying tension. The IAA is compatible with the diagnosis but not with the transformative ambition implicit in the logic of the two.

The conclusion is uncomfortable but necessary: Europe does not lose because it respects the rules, does not lose because it has a social solidarity model, as some on the right say; it loses because it strategically self-censors. The fear of risk, conflict, and imbalance has become structural vulnerability. The Industrial Accelerator Act is a first step, but it remains a prisoner of the comfortable order it seeks to save. The real question is not how much economic intervention Europe can accept. The question is whether it allows itself to continue thinking about the future with the tools of the past. As a project, the IAA protects an order under pressure without building the architecture of a European economic power capable of playing offensively.