Ex-ECB chief Mario Draghi wins Charlemagne Prize for promoting European unity
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Former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi said in his acceptance speech for the Charlemagne prize that Europe has "never had as many enemies as it does now".
PHOTO: AFP
- Mario Draghi won the Charlemagne Prize for promoting European unity amidst economic challenges.
- Armin Laschet warns Europe must boost its economy to ensure long-term security amid increasing threats.
- Draghi urges deeper EU economic integration to compete with the US and China, recommending regulatory reform.
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FRANKFURT - Former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has won the annual Charlemagne prize for promoting European unity, organisers said on Jan 17, as they warned that Europe needs to urgently boost its economy.
“The situation is serious,” German MP and prize-committee head Armin Laschet said.
“Europe must not become a pawn of external powers in the face of overlapping geopolitical crises.”
Mr Laschet added, in a sombre opening speech: “If Europe is not competitive economically it will not, in the long-term, have the financial basis, the technological basis, the industrial basis to guarantee its security.”
Mr Draghi – who was widely credited with saving the euro from collapse after promising in 2012 to do “whatever it takes” to shore up the currency amid a euro zone debt crisis – has since urged Europe to deepen economic integration to better compete with the US and China.
Mr Draghi, a former Italian prime minister, delivered 383 recommendations in his landmark 2024 EU competitiveness report, urging common regulation of capital markets and less red tape for business overall.
Europe is under increasing pressure to boost its economy, as anti-establishment parties score election wins across the continent and Russia and the US have turned increasingly hostile.
“This decision comes at a time when Europe has perhaps never had as many enemies as it does now, both internal and external,” Mr Draghi said, in a short acceptance speech transmitted by video.
“We have to become stronger, stronger militarily, stronger economically and stronger politically,” he added.
Named after the Frankish ruler Charlemagne, the first to unify much of western Europe after the fall of the western Roman Empire, the prize is awarded by a 17-strong committee mostly made up of people linked to Aachen, Charlemagne’s capital.
Previous winners of the prize include Pope Francis, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, as well as French president Emmanuel Macron and former Czech president and anti-communist dissident Vaclav Havel. AFP
