In his speech on the occasion of the Charlemagne Prize, Mario Draghi stated that, mindful of the tragedies of the 20th century and to avoid the centralization of power and the risks of hegemony, Europe has adopted an integration model that prioritizes rules over political discretion and seeks to sublimate conflict by decentralizing decisions among a large number of independent agencies, with procedures that are slow, cumbersome and can often appear bureaucratic. He does not deny the great successes achieved by this model, but he notes that it is no longer up to today's challenges. Hence his call for a "pragmatic federalism." With those words, Draghi is not just offering advice on policies to pursue; he is also raising a potentially explosive structural issue that deserves in-depth discussion.

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