The power he actually held
Mario Draghi ran the ECB from 1 November 2011 to 31 October 2019 and Italy from 13 February 2021 to 22 October 2022. Monetary policy is a governing-council act. Italian statutes are a parliamentary act. He owned the agenda in both rooms without owning every vote. He does not tax German savers by decree and he does not write Union regulations alone.
That limit is the first fact about his power. The second is that a credible backstop and a national-unity cabinet still move welfare. A central banker who says “whatever it takes”, designs OMT, launches QE, caps Greek ELA, then later writes a PNRR and continues Superbonus is not a commentator. The live score has to read those instruments as they were enacted, not as a competence brand.
What went wrong, and what is proven
QE raised asset prices. That is not a conspiracy. It is how a large asset-purchase programme works. Households without assets gained employment risk-reduction and lost relative housing access. Split the paths; do not average them into “QE was good”. Negative deposit rates cut saver income even as they eased borrower costs. He left the ECB with inflation still below target — a measured mandate miss, not a crime.
The Superbonus 110 percent building subsidy, inherited and continued, became a fiscal and fraud problem. A later government tightened it. Recording continuation under Draghi is fair. Recording him as the original author of every credit is not. Green pass rules for work and venues reduced the civic space of the unvaccinated for a defined period. Tightening reddito di cittadinanza raised pressure among some recipients.
On 14 July 2022 the Five Star Movement abstained; he offered resignation, was asked to stay, then lost the coalition. Collapse is a completed political act that returned electoral volatility. Greece 2015 as ECB president included ELA limits that contributed to capital controls. That is a dated financial-stability act with a social cost in Greece.
What improved, and how far
“Whatever it takes” on 26 July 2012, then OMT, ended an immediate redenomination panic. OMT was never used; the announcement was the instrument. TLTRO and the Single Supervisory Mechanism are credit-easing and supervision acts of the same presidency.
The PNRR put NextGenerationEU into Italian milestones. COVID vaccination accelerated after a slow Conte-era start. Energy-price relief, TAP and African gas, Ukraine alignment, a competition statute, and an IRPEF wedge cut are dated Italian acts. With Merkel and Macron he was an intellectual sponsor of common recovery debt even before Palazzo Chigi. The July 2020 bargain is still primarily a Council act; as PM he implemented the plan.
Shared responsibility, and what the score does not say
The Governing Council, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen on PNRR milestones, Five Star and League votes, and Greek authorities who imposed capital controls are not extras. Treating Draghi as sole author of the euro’s survival, or as a bystander on Superbonus and QE incidence, would be the same error in opposite directions.
The score does not say he saved the euro alone. It does not say QE was theft. It does not convert a Superbonus credit into a personal villa. It does not say OMT purchases happened. Confidence is high on ECB legal texts, the 2012 speech, and the 2022 resignation dates, and only medium where QE incidence, Superbonus fraud, and absorption of the PNRR sit between a programme and a welfare indicator.
