EPIC, the Brussels-based think tank, said on 15 October that it will expand its observatories from two to six. Each new index takes a commitment Europe has made and measures whether it is being kept.
The Longevity Index, built with the Polish Society of Longevity Medicine and the “Długowieczność dla Każdego” Foundation, will look at how Europe's health, care and pension systems are adapting to longer lives. It will be presented at the Warsaw Longevity Forum on 25 November, where EPIC is a partner.
The AI Index, built with IDEAS Research Institute, will track how far the EU and its member states have moved from AI strategy to AI adoption, in public administration and across the economy. It launches in Brussels on 7 December.
Two more are in preparation. A Defence and Space Index will follow commitments on spending, joint procurement and industrial capacity. A Housing Index will measure the affordability gap across Europe and whether national and EU measures are closing it.
The expansion builds on EPIC's Draghi Observatory, run with KEFiM at draghiwatch.eu. It follows all 383 recommendations of Mario Draghi's 2024 competitiveness report against adopted EU law. By July 2026, 60 of them, or 15.7 percent, had become law in full. Progress is slowing: the combined index rose about 1.9 points a month between September 2025 and January 2026, and about 0.4 a month between January and July 2026. EPIC's answer is a European Competitiveness Act, with one package, one adoption calendar and a public scoreboard.
The Integration Readiness Index, published with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in June 2026 at readinessindex.eu, scores ten EU candidate countries against Croatia's readiness at accession. It found that Ukraine and Moldova have overtaken Serbia and North Macedonia, and that Türkiye is less ready than in 2021.
“Europe does not lack ambition. It lacks delivery, and the public capacity to hold delivery to account,” said Dr. Antonios Nestoras, EPIC's founder and director. “The next step is to apply the same discipline to AI, ageing, defence and housing, where Europe's promises are just as large and the record is just as hard to see.”
Krzysztof Bulski, who directs EPIC's Strategy for Europe Programme, said every index follows the same method: define what delivery means, score it with an independent expert panel, publish on a fixed calendar, and propose the fix. “That makes the findings comparable across policy areas,” he said.
Brussels produces strategies faster than anyone can check them. Trackers that count adopted law, rather than announcements, give journalists and policymakers a simple test of delivery, and the Draghi count has already been picked up by the Financial Times, The Economist, POLITICO, Bloomberg and Le Monde. Extending the same method to AI, ageing, defence and housing would put four more of the EU's biggest promises on a public scoreboard. The first results arrive within eight weeks, starting in Warsaw.
The full Impact Review 2024–2026 is available at thinkepic.eu/impact-review-2024-2026.
Disclosure: EU Insider is published by EPIC.
