Ministers from central and eastern Europe have accused Mario Draghi of bringing an “old Europe” mindset to his proposals to boost EU competitiveness, saying his findings overlooked the continent’s most dynamic economies.
Officials in Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic claimed the former Italian prime minister had been over reliant on expertise from the EU’s older member states, which skewed his conclusions and underplayed priorities in their region.
Viktors Valainis, Latvia’s economy minister, told the Financial Times that Draghi could have made clear that the “bureaucracy, countless regulations and the lack of dynamism” he identified “come directly from the core of the EU, the old traditions, the ‘Old Europe’ countries, which should be the first to change”.