Welcome to the CR podcast, unpacking Europe.

Today we discuss where the EU stands one year after the landmark drug report,

which dissected the reasons behind Europe's sluggish growth.

And since then, it's fair to say that competitiveness has become the buzzword leading

Ursula-Bunderalions second term.

But the question is, what has changed in practice?

Bonderlion and Draghi themselves gave side-by-side appraisals at a conference in Brussels

earlier this week on September 16th.

And today you'll hear the CR's take on where we stand and try to read between the lines in those comments and announcements.

So let's start with Sondertr, the CR's chief economist.

Sander, what's your take?

Well, Elizabeth, I'm curious how you liked the speeches in the plural of Draghi and Fonderdin.

I was with the flu in bed, and I think that is a good metaphor for the European economy in some ways.

I think Draghi's quite somber diagnosis of last year that the European economy is losing innovation capacity,

business dynamism, suffering from high energy costs and is profoundly exposed to economic coercion,

especially from China and the US, has been driven home in what some have called the summer of

humiliation for the European Union, where basically von der Leyen on behalf of Europe's leaders

signed a fairly humiliating trade deal with the United States and where Europe is locked in

quite difficult discussions with China to get access to rare earth minerals

that China cut off to the US in response to Trump's trade war.

And Europe became consciously or unconsciously on the part of the CCP,

a collateral damage in that.

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