"We need to shift our orientation from trying to restrain this technology to understanding how to benefit from it."
Mario Draghi said that in Strasbourg on 17 September 2024, presenting his report on the future of European competitiveness. Two years on, EPIC's Draghi Implementation Index gives a dated answer to how much of the digital agenda behind that sentence has arrived.
The Draghi Implementation Index, run by the European Policy Innovation Council (EPIC) through its Draghi Observatory, tracks the report's 383 recommendations and counts how many have become binding EU law. In its July 2026 preliminary update, the sector covering digitalisation and advanced technologies has 47 measures. Three are fully implemented and 11 are partially implemented, a combined rate of 29.8%.
For comparison, the Index puts the whole report at 15.7% fully implemented and 41.3% when partial implementation is included. Digital sits well below that overall figure. Energy-intensive industries are at 54.8% and critical raw materials at 47.4% on the same measure, while energy, the Index's weakest large sector, is at 21.7%.
EPIC's own reading is that energy and digitalisation are harder cases because their recommendation sets are larger and include structural reforms. It also notes a pipeline of pending files that have not yet reached adopted-law status, among them the Digital Networks Act and technological-sovereignty initiatives. The Index counts them analytically but does not score them as implementation.
The same passage of the speech made a second argument that is easy to forget. Training frontier AI models is expensive, Draghi said, and a barrier for European firms without the backing of US big tech. But the EU can lower the cost of deployment by opening its network of high-performance computers to start-ups and industry, and by expanding that capacity. He added that many industrial uses of AI do not need the latest generative models, so uptake can be accelerated with a concerted effort to support companies.
That is a delivery agenda, not a rulebook. It depends on funding, access rules and firms that actually adopt the tools.
The most visible EU decision on AI since the report is a delay. In July, the European Parliament and the Council formally approved the Digital Omnibus for AI, which pushes back obligations for high-risk AI systems: stand-alone systems now face 2 December 2027 instead of 2 August 2026, and systems embedded in regulated products 2 August 2028. The Omnibus also moves back the deadline for national regulatory sandboxes to August 2027.
The Draghi Index does not score the Omnibus, and a delay is not the same as a verdict on Draghi's advice. Easing compliance can help firms that want to deploy AI. But it is a change to the rulebook, and Draghi's sentence was about capacity and use.
The gap between the speech and the scorecard is the useful finding. Europe has spent two years adjusting how AI is regulated. The measures that would change who can build and buy it, from compute access to financing to adoption, are mostly still in the pipeline.
What to watch: EPIC's next full Draghi review, due in September 2026, and whether the pending digital files, starting with the Digital Networks Act, reach adopted law before the end of the Commission's mandate.
