Prof. Piątkowski: Western Europe’s ignorance and arrogance must be called out bluntly

The creation of the Rhine Group, an economic initiative founded by former European Central Bank President and former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi alongside prominent European economists, businesspeople and finance figures, has revived a difficult question: why have so few of Draghi’s recommendations been put into practice?

Nearly two years after Draghi’s report on Europe’s competitiveness, only about 16% of its recommendations have reportedly been fully implemented. Piątkowski sees the new group as an attempt to move the European project beyond the bureaucratic structures of the European Commission and push urgent economic action forward.

But he questions whether the European Union, or what he calls mainly “old Europe,” needs another report filled with recommendations. The central issue, he argues, is not a shortage of ideas. It is the failure to implement them. A think tank may create a useful place for discussion, he says, but its ability to break the Union’s stagnation remains limited.

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I am not satisfied that one Pole was invited to the Rhine Group at the last minute. Poland and the entire region should have had strong representation from the start.

Piątkowski also points to Europe’s declining economic weight in the world. Drawing on professional experience in Washington, Beijing and New Delhi, he says Europe and the EU are discussed less and less internationally. For the Rhine Group, he identifies two challenges: putting both earlier and new ideas into practice, and correcting the lack of representation from half of the European Union.

When the group was announced, it had no Polish member and only one representative from the region, former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Former Polish Finance Minister Mateusz Szczurek had reportedly been invited, but his participation conflicted with internal rules at the International Monetary Fund, where he holds a director-level position. Piotr Dąbkowski, co-founder of ElevenLabs, later joined the list, along with Romania’s Luciana Lixandru, Ukraine’s Iryna Terekh and Bulgaria’s Stefania Stantcheva. Piątkowski says this remains insufficient and argues that Western Europe’s “ignorance and arrogance” toward the region must be addressed.

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Western Europe’s ignorance and arrogance must be called out bluntly.