De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
Eurocrats are belatedly developing a healthy distaste for red tape.
Dit artikel komt uit The Economist
The European Union is an economic giant. Its 27 member states combine into the world’s second-biggest economy behind America and its third-most-populous internal market, behind India and China. The EU is home to some of the world’s most recognisable brands, from Adidas to Zara, and key industrial firms such as ASML, whose lithography machines are critical in AI chipmaking, and Zeiss, whose lenses are critical to ASML.
Alas, these days the giant is sleepy. The bloc’s GDP and its stockmarket have lagged far behind America’s over the past decade (see charts 1 and 2). In April activity in its services sector fell to a 62-month low. The recent shocks which contributed to the sluggishness were not of its own making: the covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now America’s war on Iran. But the EU and its members have also been getting in their own way, by overregulating companies (see chart 3) and failing to properly integrate their supposedly single market.
