The Centre for European Policy Reform (CEPR) has published a critique of Mario Draghi's September 2024 report on European competitiveness, arguing the former European Central Bank chief's prescriptions for the telecoms sector are misdirected.

The intervention, titled "Draghi is right on many issues, but he is wrong on telecoms," lands roughly five months after Draghi delivered his 400-page blueprint to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. That document, formally "The Future of European Competitiveness," named digital infrastructure as one of three strategic priorities alongside energy and advanced technologies. It called for €750 billion in additional annual investment to close the productivity gap with the United States and China.

Draghi's telecoms chapter argued that Europe's fragmented market — spread across more than 50 fixed and mobile network operators — discourages the capital expenditure needed for next-generation fibre and 5G rollouts. His prescription combined consolidation, deeper cross-border integration, and a regulatory tilt toward long-cycle infrastructure spending. The chapter also flagged investment per capita running at roughly 40% of the US level across the bloc's biggest markets.

What does CEPR's title reveal?

The headline signals substantive disagreement with the telecoms chapter, not just stylistic reservations. CEPR — a London-based network of more than 1,500 economists founded in 1983 — has historically shaped European policy debate on competition, trade and industrial strategy. Its interventions have informed Commission merger reviews and Council guidance on telecoms regulation.

What the critique actually argues is not visible from the title. The headline alone does not specify which Draghi proposals CEPR disputes or what alternative path the think tank proposes. A reader looking for the substance will need the full piece.

Why does the Draghi telecoms chapter carry weight?

The report was commissioned to inform the European Commission's next mandate on competitiveness. Its telecoms recommendations — fewer operators, deeper cross-border integration, and a regulatory tilt toward capital-intensive rollout — have already shaped Commission communications on the Connected Continent. They are likely to feed into any successor to the European Electronic Communications Code, the bloc's main telecoms rulebook, which is scheduled for review in 2025.

The CEPR intervention also enters a wider debate about whether Europe's telecoms deficit is best addressed through market structure or alternative instruments. Some large incumbents have backed consolidation in principle, arguing scale is the prerequisite for fibre and 5G investment. Smaller operators and competitive carriers have argued the opposite: that fragmented competition is what delivered fibre take-up in markets such as Spain and France over the past decade.

What is missing from the headline?

What the CEPR critique does not say, on the evidence available, is whether it sees regulatory remedies, state aid, demand-side subsidies, or a different industrial strategy as more likely to deliver the next-generation networks Draghi argues Europe must build. Without that detail, the title functions more as a marker of disagreement than as a substantive counter-proposal.

Where does this leave Brussels?

The Commission's formal response to the Draghi report is expected in early 2025, with concrete legislative proposals likely to follow later in the year. Whether CEPR's pushback shifts that timetable — or merely adds another voice to a crowded debate — depends on how its arguments land with competition officials in Brussels and with the telecoms ministers who will carry the political weight of any consolidation push. The 2025 review of the European Electronic Communications Code will be the first concrete test of which way the policy wind is blowing.