"We are severely lagging behind in new technologies: only four of the world's top 50 tech companies are European." Mario Draghi said that to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 17 September 2024, when he presented his report on European competitiveness. In the same speech he said the EU imports over 80% of its digital technology.
Two years on, what has the department responsible for digital policy actually delivered?
The answer sits in the July 2026 update of the Draghi Implementation Index, published by the European Policy Innovation Council (EPIC) at draghiwatch.eu. The update included the index's first ranking of the Commission's directorates-general. Each Draghi measure is assigned to one lead department, and the strict rate counts only measures that have become binding EU law.
DG CNECT, which runs digital and communications policy, has 49 measures. By July 2026, 3 were implemented, 10 partly implemented, 27 in progress and 9 not implemented. That gives a strict rate of 6.1% and a combined rate, counting partial implementation, of 26.5%. Among the 12 directorates with at least ten measures, CNECT ranks ninth on the strict measure. Only DG RTD (5.9%), DG ENER (2.7%) and DG EMPL (0.0%) sit lower. The whole index stood at 15.7% strict and 41.3% combined in July. DG TRADE led the table at 41.7% strict.
The striking number is not 6.1%. It is 27. More than half of CNECT's portfolio, 55%, is neither done nor ignored. It sits in the pipeline between a recommendation and a law. Only DG ENER, with 74 measures and 48 of them in progress, has a bigger queue.
The sector view tells the same story. EPIC's tracking of the digitalisation and advanced technologies sector shows 47 measures, 3 implemented and 11 partial, a combined 29.8% in July 2026. EPIC notes that digitalisation and energy are harder than other sectors because the recommendation sets are larger and include tougher structural reforms. It also cautions that the directorate ranking is an accountability signal, not a full measure of effort, since big portfolios take longer to land.
A caveat on what the numbers mean. The index counts legal implementation, not results. It does not track whether Europe is producing more large technology companies or importing less digital technology. Those outcomes depend on far more than one department's output.
EPIC's overall conclusion from the July update is that Europe is still preparing to act at scale rather than acting at scale. Digital policy is where that gap shows most clearly, because Draghi's argument was about scale: companies that cannot grow, capital that cannot reach them, networks and compute that cost too much to build.
That makes the 27 files in progress the number to watch over the next year. Each is a measure that has moved off the starting line but not yet into law. EPIC's answer is a European Competitiveness Act, a single package with measurable objectives, a binding adoption calendar and visible cross-department responsibility, modelled on the Fit for 55 climate package. Whether Brussels builds that vehicle, or lets the backlog drain one file at a time, will decide whether the 3 becomes 30.
