Draghi at the Rimini Meeting: Technocracy Celebrates Itself

Mario Draghi's speech at the Rimini Meeting was hailed as a lucid analysis of the European crisis. In reality, upon closer inspection, it is a veritable manifesto of technocratic Europe , proposing once again the same recipe: more integration, more centralization, less sovereignty. Behind the rhetoric of "European values," one glimpses the face of a Europe that has lost its way, transforming itself into a soulless mechanism, torn from its traditions and its Christian heritage.

Europe is irrelevant

Draghi starts from a fact: the European Union has lost geopolitical weight.

"This year will be remembered as the year in which the illusion that economic power carried with it geopolitical power evaporated."

The EU—he admits—has been marginal in the peace negotiations in Ukraine, powerless in the face of China, and a bystander in Gaza and Iran. But the diagnosis doesn't lead to a reflection on the failure of Brussels' policies and subservience to NATO. For Draghi, the conclusion is always the same: not to restore freedom to states, but to increase European integration .

The rhetoric of values

Draghi tries to shield the community project behind the so-called "founding values":

«It is not skepticism towards the values ​​on which the European Union was founded: democracy, peace, freedom, independence, sovereignty, prosperity, fairness».

This seemingly reassuring formula is actually a rhetorical trap . Those who criticize today's Europe are portrayed not as defenders of sovereignty, but as skeptics of democracy or peace. In this way, any opposition is neutralized. True European values—those rooted in its Christian history, its cultures, and its popular traditions —are never mentioned.

Another passage by Draghi deserves attention: "Even those who argue that Ukraine should surrender..." is actually a way to delegitimize any diplomatic opening and justify the continuation of the conflict. In this case, with a seemingly neutral formulation, Draghi dismisses any possibility of compromise in Ukraine: anyone who speaks of negotiations would be inconsistent, because they would not accept the same fate for their own country. This phrase ignores the root causes of the war and actually serves only to reinforce the stance of endless war.

Blame the nation states

To justify the EU, Draghi repeats an old argument: nation states have failed, dragging Europe into world wars.

«In the first half of the twentieth century, nation states completely failed in the task of defending these values».

This is a reductive and ideological interpretation. It ignores the fact that the EU itself, with its blocking logic, has contributed to new tensions , from the Balkan wars to the aggression against Libya, or by participating in the war in Syria, to the conflict in Ukraine. Pro-European rhetoric thus transforms history into a tribunal where people are always guilty and the EU is the only salvation. Meanwhile, wars in the modern era are not caused by nation states as such, but for strategic reasons, geopolitical considerations, and the hoarding of resources.

Economy as the only compass

For Draghi, everything depends on efficiency, competitiveness, and "good debt" to be allocated to joint investments.

«Only forms of common debt can support large-scale European projects».

There is no room for an idea of ​​Europe as a civilization, a community of peoples, the guardian of a spiritual heritage. Europe is being reduced to an economic space , a cog in the global machine, where peoples must only adapt to new technological and military challenges.

Moreover, the assessment on this point is also lacking. Draghi claims that Europe has "prospered" thanks to the single market and open markets. But the data tell a different story. Italy, which in the 1980s was the world's fourth-largest industrial power , has now slipped out of the top spots, relegated to the top ten countries with the most serious structural difficulties. Instead of strengthening competitiveness, European integration has fostered deindustrialization , the explosion of debt, and subordination to fiscal rules that have strangled growth. Far from shared prosperity: the EU has functioned as a standardization machine that has rewarded some countries (Germany first and foremost) and penalized others, transforming national economies into productive peripheries.

Ultimately, Draghi admits the end of the liberal model based on free trade and multilateral rules. But instead of asking whether Europe needs to regain its roots and political autonomy, he uses this as a pretext to further strengthen Brussels' technocracy. In this way, the failure of the old paradigm becomes not an opportunity for renewal, but rather a further democratic erosion.

Another point: the "common debt" evoked by Draghi risks becoming yet another Trojan horse: not a solidarity mechanism, but a tool for political blackmail and disciplining governments less aligned with Brussels' directives. We are seeing this now with the sanctions against Hungary and the restriction of certain states' access to the NRRP.

Masked subordination

Draghi speaks of a Europe that must become a "leading player." But between the lines, he acknowledges that the EU remains dependent on the United States, which imposes tariffs and military spending, and on China, which constrains it with rare earths, and ultimately proposes adapting to those models. His recipe is greater integration to gain more influence , but without questioning its subordination to the Western order led by Washington, nor envisioning a new direction. Ultimately, he talks about values, but in the subsequent discussion, they find no space.

Draghi cites as successes the unity demonstrated during the pandemic, Next Generation EU, and the war in Ukraine. In reality, these are merely emergency responses, serving the EU's now-consolidated logic: it is the emergency that creates unity, as Mario Monti aptly observed. But this unity does not arise from genuine political autonomy: rather, it is the instrument with which Brussels advances global agendas to which it remains fully subordinate, often externally directed by the financial markets and those international powers deeply rooted in the political sphere of the globalists in Washington and Great Britain.

In particular, when Draghi cites the unity demonstrated during the pandemic or in sending aid to Ukraine as a show of strength, he forgets that these were emergency decisions taken under external pressure. Not autonomy, but externally directed reactivity : the EU only acts when triggered by global think tanks and major powers, and always following other people's agendas.

Conclusion: a Europe without a soul

Draghi's speech is not a proposal for rebirth, but yet another confirmation of the fate that European elites wish to impose: a continent uprooted, annihilated, reduced to an economic and military platform, incapable of expressing its civilization and its Christian heritage.

Behind the call to “transform skepticism into action” lies the demand to bend even further to technocratic integration , which in reality means forced uniformity, the erasure of national identities, and the sacrifice of traditions.

In the name of economic stability and technological competition, Draghi's Europe is a soulless project, which has lost the meaning of its own path and consigned its people to a future of mere bureaucratic management .

The last point I'd like to highlight is the erasure of the cultural dimension. Throughout the entire speech , there's not a single reference to Europe as a Christian civilization . This is a significant omission: Europe is reduced to a technological and industrial cog.

Not a word about the Christian heritage, the traditions of peoples, or culture as the foundation of coexistence. For Draghi, Europe is merely technology, debt, and competitiveness. This is the clearest confirmation that we are facing a soulless project.