Draghi's Rhine Group seeks to fix Europe from the borderlands

Mario Draghi's newly formed Rhine Group has set out to address Europe's most pressing challenges, according to an interview with its executive director published by Euronews this week. The group, named after the river that flows through the heart of the continent, is positioning itself as a forum for ideas on how to fix a European Union beset by political fragmentation, economic divergence and a crisis of public trust.

Speaking to Euronews, executive director Luis Garicano outlined the group's mission, its membership and the urgency behind its creation. The initiative arrives at a moment when the EU's internal fractures — between north and south, east and west, centre and periphery — have become impossible to ignore, and when the bloc's ability to act decisively is increasingly questioned by its own citizens.

For a bureau that reads Italy as a frontier of Europe rather than its centre, the Rhine Group's ambitions carry particular weight. Friuli-Venezia Giulia, with its Austro-Hungarian past and its Slovene and Friulian minorities, has spent generations negotiating the very borders and identities that the group now hopes to reconcile.