Good morning. As EU leaders prepare to meet this week to discuss how to urgently improve the bloc’s moribund economy, we reveal today that progress on already-identified remedies has been woeful. And we report on a call from the European parliament for the EU’s antitrust chief to take a closer interest in Netflix’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros Discovery.

Self-inflicted demise

The EU is moving at a snail’s pace towards improving its economy and following the recommendations of a landmark report on competitiveness, according to an audit of recent legislation seen by Alice Hancock.

Context: In September 2024 former ECB president and Italian ex-premier Mario Draghi published a report with 383 recommendations for the EU to save its economy from the “slow agony” of waning competitiveness on the global stage.

That report became the compass for Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission president. But progress is not looking good.

Analysis by the European Policy Innovation Council shows that only 15 per cent of Draghi’s recommendations have been fully implemented, up from just 11 per cent in September.

Almost two-thirds remain either in progress or have not been implemented at all, according to the report, which has parsed the EU rule book and mapped it against Draghi’s publication.

The areas with most progress were those that have been impacted “by strong external pressure”, such as defence or trade, the authors said.

EU Council president António Costa will host a “retreat” on Thursday for EU leaders to discuss the single market and competitiveness, and has invited Draghi and fellow former Italian premier Enrico Letta, who also penned a survey of the single market in 2024.

In a letter to Costa seen by the FT, the liberal Renew group in the European parliament said that “our collective attempt to avoid Europe’s ‘slow agony’ has been, well, slow”.

They also noted that while the EU was “horrified” by US President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff regime, “we seem to be strangely complacent about the ‘internal tariffs’ we self-inflict” through barriers inside the single market.

“If we implemented Draghi . . . with half the energy with which we constantly talk about Trump, we’d soon have no reason to talk about him at all,” said Renew vice-president João Cotrim de Figueiredo.

EU ambassadors met von der Leyen for lunch on Friday. Many present told the FT they worry that talks on improving the single market have been hijacked by parallel discussions about reducing the bloc’s external dependencies via controversial “Buy European” measures, favoured particularly by France.

French President Emmanuel Macron will attend an industry summit in Antwerp along with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and von der Leyen on Wednesday.

A draft declaration for that summit reads: “The Draghi report has not been implemented. The situation is worse than a year ago and the next five years will be the most challenging years for Europe’s industry in many decades.”

Chart du jour: End of the affair

The recent unravelling of transatlantic ties has come as a profound shock in Germany, where the bond with the US runs deep.

Mergers in the stream

An influential lawmaker has warned about the consequences of Netflix’s potential takeover of media conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery, calling on the EU’s competition chief to keep a close eye, writes Barbara Moens.

Context: Streaming service Netflix and US film studio Paramount are locked in a fierce battle to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, one of Hollywood’s oldest studios. WBD’s board has rejected Paramount’s bid for the entire company, and prefers Netflix’s offer to buy just its studio and streaming business.

Both Paramount and Netflix are now trying to convince American and European regulators to get their blessing for an eventual acquisition, with Netflix already facing a US government antitrust review. 

EU centre-right lawmaker Andreas Schwab has now raised concerns about a possible Netflix takeover with the bloc’s competition chief Teresa Ribera, who would be in charge of greenlighting the merger on the European side.

Consolidation in the streaming market “may reduce consumer choice, weaken incentives to sustain quality and innovation, increase subscription prices, and expand the scale and scope of user data collection”, Schwab wrote in a letter to Ribera seen by the FT.

Schwab did not mention Paramount in his letter, focusing on Netflix’s dominance in streaming instead. He also warned about potential consequences for European cultural diversity and independent production ecosystems.

Netflix declined to comment on the letter.

Last month, the streaming giant said it was still confident it could gain regulatory approval. Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos also highlighted the company’s relatively low share of TV time in the US, in a preview of likely arguments it will make to get the green light.

What to watch today

1. European parliament plenary session begins in Strasbourg.

2. EU Council president António Costa meets Albanian premier Edi Rama.

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