European cooperation or centralization has returned to the center of debate following the 2026 Charlemagne Prize awarded to Mario Draghi. The issue raises a broader question: which decision-making architecture truly strengthens resilience, competitiveness, and Europe’s adaptive capacity? And how much room remains for States to define their own strategic interests autonomously?
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The awarding of the 2026 Charlemagne Prize to Mario Draghi, held on May 14 in Aachen, has been interpreted as recognition of a trajectory spanning some of the most significant phases of contemporary European governance.
In his speech, Draghi emphasized the need for a Europe capable of acting more rapidly and in a more coordinated manner, evoking a form of “pragmatic federalism” in response to an international environment perceived as increasingly competitive, unstable, and fragmented.
More than Draghi himself, however, it is the signal that matters.
The recognition appears to reflect a growing conviction:
the current European architecture may be too slow to confront emerging systemic pressures.
This raises a fundamental question:
does greater integration automatically increase resilience and capacity?
Or does the concentration of power risk amplifying rigidity, errors, and the asymmetric distribution of costs?
Systemic pressure and the drive toward centralization
he European vaccine procurement strategy represents one of the most debated cases of recent years.
The common model produced clear advantages:
• greater collective bargaining power;
• shared access;
• an initial reduction in intra-European competition.
However, it also generated several criticisms:
• contractual rigidity;
• significant vaccine surpluses;
• disposal costs;
• controversies over transparency.
Italy subsequently recorded substantial quantities of unused doses and related costs.
The point is not the overall validity of the strategy itself.
It concerns a different dynamic:
when errors occur within highly centralized systems, they tend to propagate on a larger scale.
COVID-19: common coordination and the propagation of error
The European vaccine procurement strategy represents one of the most debated cases of recent years.
The common model produced clear advantages:
— greater collective bargaining power;
— shared access;
— an initial reduction in intra-European competition.
However, it also generated several criticisms:
— contractual rigidity;
— significant vaccine surpluses;
— disposal costs;
— controversies over transparency.
Italy subsequently recorded substantial quantities of unused doses and related costs.
The point is not the overall validity of the strategy itself.
It concerns a different dynamic:
when errors occur within highly centralized systems, they tend to propagate on a larger scale.
Ukraine, energy, and differentiated impacts
The sanctions against Russia and the reconfiguration of Europe’s energy system have produced different effects across Member States.
Countries characterised by:
— high manufacturing intensity;
— significant energy dependence;
— greater industrial exposure;
have faced greater pressures.
Italy is among the clearest examples.
Energy diversification has reduced some vulnerabilities, but has also entailed high costs and complex adjustments.
This does not automatically imply that the common decisions were wrong.
It does, however, reveal a structural reality: the same policy can generate very different costs depending on each country’s economic structure.
Lobbying, decision-making distance and accountability
European institutions operate within a broad ecosystem of interest representation.
The EU Transparency Register lists thousands of entities engaged in institutional lobbying, including major energy, pharmaceutical, technology and financial groups.
This phenomenon is not unique to Brussels. It exists in every political system.
However, as the distance between decision-makers and citizens increases, so too may the perception of:
— reduced accountability;
— opacity;
— difficulty in attributing responsibility;
— diminished direct democratic oversight.
The issue is not the existence of lobbying. It is the ability of systems to rapidly correct decisions perceived as inconsistent with differing national interests.
The same issue takes on an additional dimension when centralised capacity extends to the protection of the information space and democratic processes: the question then becomes who defines the threat and what safeguards govern that definition. On this issue: Von der Leyen, Dissent and European Democracy: When Opposition Enters the Threat Perimeter.
The Italian dimension: national resilience before convergence
For countries with specific characteristics, resilience does not depend exclusively on European integration.
It also depends on the ability to:
— define autonomous strategic priorities;
— preserve decision-making margins;
— protect industrial competitiveness;
— build forms of cooperation consistent with their own structural interests.
Italy has a distinctive configuration.
It is simultaneously:
— a manufacturing power;
— a Mediterranean platform;
— a member of the EU and NATO;
— a logistics and energy hub;
— a bridge towards North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East.
Its requirements do not automatically coincide with those of other major European countries.
The question therefore changes: how much room remains for states to determine their own interests?
Variable geometry: cooperation as adaptability
One possible alternative to increasing concentration does not consist in weakening cooperation.
It consists in strengthening: more resilient, more strategically aware states with a greater capacity to choose selective forms of cooperation.
Energy.
Industry.
Defence.
Mediterranean.
Technology.
Supply chains.
From this perspective, variable-geometry cooperation does not represent fragmentation.
It can represent strategic adaptability.
CSR Assessment
Historically, rising systemic pressure tends to generate demands for greater decision-making concentration.
Contemporary Europe does not appear to be an exception.
Global competition, war, energy insecurity, technological dependence and security concerns increasingly reinforce the perception that the current European configuration may be too slow to respond to accelerating transformations.
However:
greater centralization does not automatically translate into greater resilience.
Recent experience suggests that common decisions can simultaneously produce:
• shared benefits;
• asymmetric distribution of costs;
• reduced national flexibility;
• difficulties in correcting strategic choices;
• growing distance between decision-makers and economic consequences.
For countries with specific structural characteristics — such as Italy — the risk does not concern only the loss of formal autonomy.
It concerns the gradual reduction of the capacity to define interests, priorities and independent negotiating margins.
From this perspective, Italian resilience may depend less on the quantity of integration and more on the quality of participation:
convergence when cooperation increases capacity; differentiation when uniformity generates vulnerability.
European cooperation can act as a multiplier of strength.
It may instead become a multiplier of risk when:
concentration of power → reduction of strategic plurality → asymmetric distribution of costs → erosion of national decision-making capacity
The central issue therefore may not be:
more Europe or less Europe.
The question appears different:
Does Italy still retain sufficient economic, industrial, energy and political capacity to choose the degree of convergence consistent with its own interests?
Because contemporary sovereignty may increasingly be measured here:
in the real ability to decide when to cooperate, with whom to cooperate, and when not to.
A final question therefore remains open:
Will Europe become more resilient when States are able to say “yes” with conviction because they preserve the real capacity to say “no” when necessary?
Update — September 2026
The State of the Union address of 16 September 2026 introduces a new element into the relationship between European cooperation and the concentration of decision-making capacity. Ursula von der Leyen proposed a European Security Council, an Emergency Security Protocol — described as a kind of “Europe’s own Article 4” for threats that remain below the threshold of armed aggression — and a European Instrument for Strategic Enablers.
The most significant aspect, however, concerns the diagnosis accompanying these proposals. Von der Leyen stated that Europe’s doctrine, institutions and decision-making processes have not kept pace with the new security environment, explicitly raising the question of whether systems built around the pursuit of consensus and compromise remain adequate.
The issue examined in this article therefore takes on an additional dimension. Sharing capabilities and concentrating decision-making authority are not necessarily the same thing. Greater common capacity can strengthen European resilience; but, particularly in the field of security, the concentration of decision-making processes can also amplify the consequences of an error in attribution or threat assessment.
This brings into focus a variable that becomes critical when decisions concern escalation and security: the irreversibility of consequences. A regulatory decision can be corrected, an economic measure modified, a sanction lifted. A decision that contributes to military escalation, by contrast, can immediately alter the system and drastically narrow the options available thereafter.
The issue to monitor in Europe’s future security architecture is therefore not simply how much capacity will be built at the common level, but through which activation thresholds, procedures, verification mechanisms and lines of accountability that capacity will be exercised. The greater the potential irreversibility of a decision, the more important the mechanisms designed to prevent a decision-making error from becoming a European systemic error.
Further reading:
Areas of Global Strategic Analysis
External sources:
Charlemagne Prize (Karlspreis) – official announcement and motivations
Draghi Report on European Competitiveness – European Commission
EU Transparency Register
Eurostat – official EU data
EU sanctions against Russia – Council of the European Union