Draghi Report or Hugging Face: who will win the tech race?

When a swarm of AI agents decided to hack the computation company Hugging Face in July, it took them six days. That event became a case study on how, and how fast, artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping both economic and power dynamics worldwide. When Mario Draghi published his report on how to re-establish European competitiveness, it took 729 days for Brussels to realize that only a fraction of his recommendations had been enacted. Tomorrow will mark the second anniversary of the report’s presentation and, according to draghiwatch.eu, only 15.7 percent of his recommendations have been fully implemented so far. Tech and telecoms policy might have lost the “Draghi spirit” In digital and tech, the number of fully implemented recommendations is currently even lower: only 6.4 percent. Draghi made a point of putting technology at the core of EU reform, and zoomed in on telecoms as a critical sector to deliver tech sovereignty and growth for future decades to come. Why? Because 5G, fiber and future 6G networks are the backbone of our economies and societies at a time in which economic growth is driven by technology. As to the connectivity sector, less than half of Draghi’s telecom recommendations have been picked up in ongoing reforms and policy strategies. None has been implemented yet. Worse, the recommendations that have moved forward so far are largely cost-creating for the industry, such as technology bans in 5G or forced phase-outs of copper networks. The measures that would directly boost investment remain limited, for now, mainly to spectrum proposals; more on this below. That implementation gap matters because the technologies now moving fastest are precisely the ones that depend on Europe’s connectivity foundations. AI, cloud, defense tech and satellite connectivity are no longer separate policy files: they are becoming one industrial race. Four fights reshaping connectivity (and tech leadership) today Since Draghi’s report was published in 2024, innovation in connectivity has moved fast. The first fight is helping Europe claim its slice of the AI boom. Telecom operators are doing their part: data must move between AI data centers and back to users, and advanced 5G and future 6G networks can help industry turn AI into productivity gains. A German manufacturing plant or an Italian port using 5G and AI applications should be able to compete with Chinese or American peers. Worse, the recommendations that have moved forward so far are largely cost-creating for the industry, such as technology bans in 5G or forced phase-outs of copper networks. The second fight is creating a healthy sovereign cloud market. Many telecom operators are already responding to the demand from European businesses and public administration to provide sovereign cloud offers. Another crucial fight is the one for developing more defense tech capabilities in Europe. Here, the synergies between defense companies and the telecom sector are becoming ever clearer, as keeping Europeans safe now requires advanced and secure communications. Just think of drones: telcos are already deploying services to keep our public spaces safe from malicious drones. Finally, the fight for tech leadership also takes to space: Europe rightly has the ambition to get into the satellite connectivity game rather than leaving it only to others. Here, a recent positive satellite spectrum decision by the European Commission might help build leadership over time. Four reforms that will decide whether Europe catches up The European telecom sector is a regulated one and its health has downstream effects on the whole digital economy. This is why Europe can only win in tech when it completes the deep telecom reforms suggested by Draghi. Our view is that this depends on at least four major policy actions. First, we need scale. Europe’s telecom markets remain too fragmented, with many operators too small to invest at the scale needed for advanced networks and dramatically improved custome