"EU companies face electricity prices that are 2-3 times higher than those in the United States and in China." Mario Draghi said that in Strasbourg on 17 September 2024, when he presented his report on European competitiveness.
Two years on, the question is who inside the Commission was meant to fix it, and how far they have got. EPIC's Draghi Implementation Index (draghiwatch.eu), edited by Dr Antonios Nestoras, tracks how many of the report's 383 recommendations have become binding EU law. Its July 2026 preliminary update gives a blunt answer.
The update ranks the Commission's directorates-general by how much of their Draghi portfolio they have fully implemented. DG Energy holds 74 measures, the largest portfolio in the ranking. It has fully implemented two of them, a strict rate of 2.7%. Only DG Employment, at 0.0%, ranks lower. DG Trade tops the table at 41.7%.
Counting partial implementation, DG Energy reaches 27.0%. The full split is 2 implemented, 18 partial, 48 in progress and 6 not implemented. EPIC's own caveat matters here: the ranking is an accountability signal, not a full measure of institutional effort. Big portfolios such as DG Energy, DG CNECT and DG GROW stay central to the agenda whatever their strict rates. A directorate with 74 items to deliver is holding a very different load from one with 12.
The sector view in the same update points the same way. Across all 83 energy measures, one is implemented and 17 are partial, a combined 21.7%. Defence, energy-intensive industries, clean technologies, transport and critical raw materials score relatively high. EPIC says energy and digitalisation remain harder because their recommendation sets are larger and include tougher structural reforms.
The clearest energy movement in the July update was about security, not price. Regulation (EU) 2026/261, adopted on 26 January 2026, sets a binding framework for phasing out Russian pipeline gas and LNG. It requires national gas diversification plans and adds prior authorisation and contract-level reporting for imports. That advanced two Draghi measures, the gas security strategy and better energy data and monitoring, from in progress to partially implemented.
EPIC is careful about what this proves. The act, it says, does not amount to a full long-term EU gas strategy, but it gives the Union a stronger legal architecture for cutting strategic dependency. It also fits the index's wider pattern: the EU moves fastest where competitiveness is fused with security.
The reforms EPIC calls comparatively weak sit next to it in the same list. They include lower and more predictable energy costs, faster permitting across the whole infrastructure pipeline and large-scale private investment. Those are the parts that would show up on an industrial electricity bill.
Draghi named electricity prices as one of the sharpest gaps with Europe's rivals. EPIC's index shows that the directorate holding the most Draghi work has turned the least of it into law, and that the one big energy act to register was about supply security. This week's energy talks in Dublin, where the Commission is asking capitals for voluntary savings rather than binding rules, show how that gap looks in a crisis. EPIC's figures are the latest published, from its July 2026 update, which assessed the 34 legal acts adopted between February and June 2026.
