here we go again.

European leaders will hold ‘informal retreat” On Thursday at a castle in Belgium, they discussed again Ways to reinvigorate the EU’s competitiveness in the face of global competitors.

EU Council President Antonio Costa said the meeting would make leaders “rethink our approach” and called the European single market with 450 million consumers a “real superpower”.

How many times do they need to talk about competitiveness instead of actually doing what they are supposed to do?

Two years ago, former Italian Prime Minister and Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi and another former Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, presented them with solutions in two excellent and in-depth reports on how to improve the EU’s competitiveness and create a more meaningful single market.

What will it take for EU leaders to actually implement them?

Draghi’s 2024 report warned that the EU would face “slow pain” if it failed to catch up with rivals. If the EU wants to keep pace economically with rivals in the United States and China, he writes, it “needs more coordinated industrial policy, faster decision-making and massive investment.”

That same year, Letta prepared a report on the future of the single market, which said: “Action has become urgent, not least because the window of opportunity to intervene and restart the European economy threatens to close in the near future.”

He called for regulatory simplification to make the single market more dynamic and better support research and innovation.

Adoption of both reports has been painfully slow, and EU watchers are growing increasingly frustrated.

Why? Why is progress so slow? Governments blame Brussels, and Brussels blames governments. Same old, same old.

Solutions that are widely praised already exist. What seems to be missing is the formulation of these solutions.

For Europe to realize its potential, we don’t need the Belgian castle to retreat. We need more action and less talk.