"The situation had already been deteriorating for years, but the trade war started by the United States marks a breaking point", This is how Mario Draghi, speaking at the XVIII Cotec innovation summit in Coimbra, Portugal, raises a new alarm about Europe's future in an increasingly unpredictable geopolitical environment. The former prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank warns that "the recent actions of the US administration will have an impact on the European economy, even if tensions ease". Draghi encourages Europe to reflect on past mistakes and present challenges. "We have to ask ourselves why we stopped growing on our own", he explains. However, he warns that in the short term, "we cannot diversify from the United States" and "we will have to find an agreement with them to keep our market access open". In the long run, however, reliance on Washington may prove untenable. For this reason, Draghi identifies three pressing issues: excessive austerity, which has stifled public investment; weak internal productivity growth, which has increased at half the U.S. rate since 2000; and the failure to adjust real wages. "If we want Europe to become more competitive and independent, we need to correct these structural errors", he concluded.