Former Italian prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank. In September 2024 he presented a landmark report on EU competitiveness, commissioned by the bloc as a blueprint to escape a two-decade economic morass. He warned that without bold reforms the continent risked a "slow agony" of relative decline. Together with Enrico Letta, also a former Italian prime minister, he proposed a "28th regime"—an EU-wide corporate form to bypass fragmented national rules—which was taken up (in diluted form) by the European Commission as "EU Inc" in March 2026. Among his chief recommendations was the completion of the single market, which the IMF estimates is fragmented by de facto tariffs averaging 44% on goods (three times the level between American states) and 110% on services. By mid-2025, according to the European Policy Innovation Council, only 10% of his many suggestions had been implemented.
I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.