Interesting. Your reply is more in line with what I have come to expect from you than your original post was. The post came across as pretty nationalistic, albeit in the form of a supranational European nationalism, complete with all the usual accoutrements of nationalism such as admonitions for the many to make sacrifices in order to defend the status and wealth of the few. I agree that the nations of Europe need to take back control of their destiny, either collectively or co-operatively, but that's about as much as I can agree with in your original post.
Hmm, I didn't notice any such implications. Who are the many who should sacrifice themselves for the few, and who are the few?
As I understand it, what sounded like nationalism was a call for the population to wake up and solve their problems. If you want to galvanize a group into action, praise is inevitable (You are strong! You can do it! as the coach says to the team). If that group is a population (Europeans), it will inevitably sound nationalistic, nothing can be done. But how would you wake them up in a different way, without any praise?
What I thought he said was: Yes, we are pathetic losers. But it hasn't always been that way! We know there have been better times! We can be strong again! - In the past, 'better times' meant conquering and killing other populations (not only for Europeans but for everybody); now it means good trade, beneficial for all sides.
This point of view requires that Europe be a single near-homogenous society with a shared commonality of history, language and culture, like the United States and Australia, Russia*, and less successfully, Canada, although it isn't.
It's a Zionist driven agenda, propaganda and agents. Trying to build what next they will sit on, suck and destroy. Where next they will build their thrones and 'get served' by Europeans, after the shameless things for a century in America. They are seeking to federalize Europe too. Same corrupt future scheme to rise for power after decaying USA. Probably want to control the Turks better and other Muslims (as if all their abuse in middle east and outside isn't enough, all the deaths 'caused')
That's nice. But you have to know the nature of conspiracies and changes. Anyway, enjoy, have your Europe go on war against Russia. If you ask who, how and why. Well, I already mentioned the z and the j
I tried ignoring your comments, but this is beyond the pale. You are delusional if you actually believe this nonsense and evil if you don’t believe it but post it anyway.
I replied to a different comment. But I'll reply here too something a bit different: enjoy your nuclear holocausts. Maybe then you will wake up on the z and J altogether with the money. But what will be left then?
Not exciting. Reason yourselves into death. That's the hidden motive. There is no more sense to talk into the average westerners and their pharises. Maybe you didn't notice but there are governments preparing for survival, prolonged war and disasters. So yeah, reason yourselves into death, bow to the ones I already mentioned. Talk to me when you have a sovereign military and leadership, which you haven't had for 300 years or so, yeah that's despite the Nazi period and their acts.
Both analysis and prognosis are not "Pueyo level", because they are focused on the present. The entire content is well-known in Brussels.
And then:
> China is closing its cycle and it will take half a Century to reemerge
> Russia is not in great shape, especially after having exposed its miserable military condition
> The USA risks a civil war and perhaps even a decline: 4 years left for them to escape such fate (maybe)
> To be a military superpower, having a large population is not at all necessary (see Russia). Much less is it a sufficient one (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria)
> The EU has not aspired and does not aspire to become a superpower. It is the US insanity that is pushing it to arm itself
> Quality of life and net family wealth are higher in the EU than everywhere else
> EU aging will be offset by immigration. The biggest key challenge is managing immigration
PS: EU legislation has had some slips (imho GDPR and AI Act) and criticism (DMA, DSA). However, these too are seen as innovative and necessary steps towards regulating the digital economy and the "animal spirits" of capitalism. The world looks here to learn.
China is destroying Germany’s car industry today, not tomorrow. It will likely attempt a takeover of Taiwan not in 50 years, but within 10.
Russia’s economy is. Penetrated towards the military. I wouldn’t bet on it crumbling immediately. If it wins, it will have co-opted a huge new population, and will be incentivized to grow more.
There is no way the U.S. will get into a civil war, and the next 4 years might be shitty for the coming if things continue this way, but the U.S. is structurally healthier for the economy than the EU.
Agreed that a large population is neither necessary nor sufficient for a strong army. But it definitely helps. Regardless this is not a core argument of my reasoning?
The EU has not aspired to become a superpower because it didn’t need to. Now it does. Because the “high quality of life” bill is coming due.
China has over 1B people, while Germany has less than 100M. Normally, China would produce cars for its local market and overproduce for export. But what we’re used to is a small country like Germany producing cars for the entire world. In my view, it was Germany that hurt China’s car industry by exporting German cars for decades, and now China is simply taking its rightful place. Germany still has its local market, but what it’s used to is overproducing and exporting. Not good what has happened in the history when Germany faces a risk in its exports.
I'm sorry, but I do not give a single French-fried fig about companies "suffering" because they're required to protect my personal data and forget me if asked. The privacy landscape in the US is horrific and getting worse; Europe doesn't need to emulate that dumpster fire.
Not comparable. Those examples you mention represent the unification of *warring* states with a common cultural background. Major European powers have been at peace for 80 years.
I wish for all European languages to be preserved and celebrated, not overshadowed by a single institutional language for the sake of practicality.
The issue is the lack of leadership in Europe, the politicians in charge are Pedro Sanchez, Macron, Scholz and Starmer No more Bismarks, Talleyrands, de Gaulles or Churchills. In this times, great european minds enjoy their retirement drinking a daikiri in Palma or complain about the thetered caps.
Poor me that i have time to play with my kids after work, i can send the 7yo alone to buy groceries, i need not to worry about surviving if i am fired, i need no to pay a student loan for 30 years, i live in bustling livable city where people walks and bikes.
Even worse is to have 1 year of paid maternity leave (bad, bad, bad) and when i send kid to school, i don't have to worry that an unsong hero will enter the class with a AK-47 because freedom of speech is so inferior here. where is the thrill? life so boring...
Not too mention how unfortunate that EU billionaires are not as billionaires as US billionaires so they can't trickle down so much love and compassion.
Shameful that arguably the 2 most important companies in the world in 2025 (ASML and Novo Nordisk) are European, US desperately depends on both, and no US or Chinese company can replicate what they do despite decades of trying — nevertheless the toxic wasteland that is Facebook is worth more than both combined because ooooohhh the americans are so smart and productive.
And so so much overregulation in the EU, my goodness. Need to pay VAT in Europe? Report to OSS and they'll redirect to each country their part. In the US? Just deal with 10000 different tax regulations down to county level. So much easier!!
What a miserable life is to be in EU, really (except Hungary, the only cool ones at the moment)
I have time to play with my kids after work every day, my student loan payments are about 2% of my monthly income, I have 20 days of vacation a year plus state and federal holidays, and after I got laid off last year, state unemployment covered my essential bills in the month it took me to find a new job. Also, there hasn’t been a single gun crime in my town in decades, even with an avid hunting community and about 45% of people in my county having a pistol permit.
America has its problems, but it’s not hardly the dystopian hellhole many Europeans seem think it is.
I wish the author well in his efforts to promote a more independent and dynamic Europe. I fear he faces an uphill battle - as other commenters have noted, Europeans will need to let go of a lot of misconceptions and luxury beliefs before they can achieve their full potential on the international stage.
My wife is in LA right now for work in supposedly a nice and safe part of the city (close to Lakers stadium i believe): she has been told to never go out alone even during day. That sounds hellhole to me.
I worked for a large company with 50% workforce in US and 50% in EU. US mothers where at company conventions around the world 2 weeks after giving birth. if they got sick, they would take sick days out of holiday credits.
Lots of well paid US colleagues (better than EU folks) wished to move and live the EU.
Almost no one in EU wished the opposite except for a single demographic group: young-ish single white men without too many responsibilities in life.
Europe has passed their full potential on the international stage. That was in 1914 - 1918. Everything since then has been the throes of a dying giant.
oh are you romantizating colonization, aren't you? so alpha.
no, Europe has been as shit during 17-19 centuries as US during 20-21 centuries. US has now < 30 yrs left of unchallenged supremacy, and then will be Chinas turn to be the bullies of the world.
nothing to be proud of there, chap.
instead, Europe is the only place in the world that has been almost war-free in the last 80 years (save for balkans in 90's) with a focus on peace, union and prosperity never seen at that scale in whole human history
When Europe was great it was because of the trade opportunities resulting from colonial expansion. Some would call that exploitation, I don’t.
Importantly, you utterly failed to grasp the concept that the best of Europe’s young men were killed or broken in the trenches of WW1 and the survivors went home to societies that failed them. Everything that has happened since in Europe is the result of that demographic catastrophe.
And wtf is “as shit during 17-19 centuries as US during 20-21 centuries” supposed to mean?
I assume from your poor idiom that you’re German and can’t appropriately use the definite article or ordinal numbers; did you mean the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries?
Did you mean “as shit as” to be “as great as” or “as poorly behaved as” or “as backward as”? At any rate, what ever you meant it’s a poor choice of comparison for your inept argument. Whatever your intent, Europe is the worse in the comparison because although Europe was X 300 years ago, now the USA has supplanted it as X.
lol. the total lack of understanding and basic human empathy of you saying that the spoils of colonialism are not exploitation is very congruent with the total lack of understanding and basic human empathy of you trying to guess my nationality and resorting to surface -level arguments on eloquence of language used.
you failed to grasp that my family hs lived under a european dictatorial regime and i know first hand the value of shit you apparently always have enjoyed and taken for granted (now translate "shit" again)
Actually, I was insulting you, but thanks for trying.
Do you realise that you’re defending the abolition of European national identity and sovereignty by the amalgamation of the eu as a single state? And your argument for that is “America bad” based on hearsay?
This is so funny because half of Americans don’t pay income tax, the US has it’s own successful version of Novo (Eli Lily) and it was the US that invested the billions into ASML to make it is today (indeed at the time it was unheard of and a sign of great trust in the Dutch for the US to do such a thing)
I agree almost completely with the points made in the article. The issue here is that most europeans have these luxury beliefs deeply engrained in their identity. Net zero, the welfare state, pension and unemployment subsidies, ... Good times have created weak people, and now we must suffer tough times and start telling people the truth.
Many colleagues laugh at North Americans for their focus on work, while praising the excellent work-life balance they enjoy in Europe. I'm afraid that changing the narrative and accepting that our model is unsustainable is a hard pill to swallow for the vast majority of europeans.
The comments here are a live demonstration of the luxury beliefs you mention. So much delusion contained in so few words.
Europe thinks it’s the continent of enlightened pragmatism and balance. But it’s really just the continent of staleness, mediocrity, and irrelevance - and even that only for the time being. The debts are coming due.
Exactly. There's nothing special about Europe. The wealth we enjoy today was built with hard work over many years. The default state of humankind is poverty, if we stop focusing on growth and progress we will lose everything.
Another very good article, Tomas. I agree with many of your proposals. However, as with the previous article on Asian Development, how do you reconcile this with your view that the nation-state as a relevant political, economic and cultural entity is in decline, and that its days are numbered?
Can nation building be done on a continental scale when nationalism itself is disrupted by technologies that favor decentralization?
But isn’t country aggregation kind of one of the few ways nation-states can fight? The more they control nice places to live, the more leverage they have on sovereign individuals. A market with 196 providers has much more competition than one with 5
Also, what is your take on "Can nation building be done on a continental scale when nationalism itself is disrupted by technologies that favor decentralization?" ? :)
Yes, it would be a way of making the fight more manageable for them.
But:
- it would not eliminate internal competition, and might exacerbate it. See Texas vs. California in the USA, for example.
- What other bloc could emerge in the next 30 years to constitute the equivalent of a federal EU? Mercosur? Extremely doubtful. Who else?
The EU is a process that started over 70 years ago, and is still far from completion.
- If only the EU manages to form a new federal bloc, it could exacerbate its well-known negative tendencies, described in this article, and prevent it from responding effectively to the exacerbated fiscal and demographic competition between countries.
All this at the same time as we are likely to see an explosion of different types of sovereignty, with special economic zones, free cities, network states, etc.
Europe doesn't need to be "great again" as you suggest in this article. What Europe needs is to continue being as good as it is, and this contains social welfare. If you destroy social welfare, or the environment by mining shale gas, then it's not worth fighting for the current values of Europe.
You have argued in the past in favour of European values. Why are you not holding them up here?
Countering Russia while keeping European values is, in my opinion, the right question. Some answers (from a different political avenue than yours):
- Tax the rich to get money for the rearm without underfunding social services
- Reinforce renewables so that we don't have to buy gas from anyone: not Russia, not the US, not anyone. Be independent (this also means: no nuclear rods coming from Russia)
- Open the door for immigration to fill in the population gap
- Keep workers' benefits so that professionals want to work for European companies instead of for the ultracapitalist ones.
- Keep investing on knowledge and science as the way forward for a society
- Keep protecting the environment
- And yes, keep a critical eye on what Europe does. Simplify things for companies without being detrimental to the society or the environment. Protect the local industry when it makes sense to do so. Simplify what needs simplification.
- Promote democracy. Maybe current European leaders are forgetting a bit about that nowadays, but there's no long-term society success without this.
This is my Europe. This is a Europe that can have a safe place in the world. This is a Europe worth fighting for.
“…German President-elect Merz is working on a constitutional amendment that allows unlimited defense spending… Germany isn't the only country doing its part. Most of Russia's bordering countries have vastly increased their military spending… Poland is considering developing its own nuclear bombs… Where there's a will, there's a way. What should Europe do? Europe needs to unite and increase its military spending.”
I'm disappointed and saddened to read all this. I considered you to be an extremely creative, progressive, and constructive person. Now I see I must add to that list: irresponsible.
I would have liked to see you explore the conditions for making Europe a safer place and how to integrate Russia there, instead of this call for militarism and confrontation.
There are sufficient signs in the news that RF in taking Europe's intended increase in military spending as a pretext for justified military interventions. I wonder how a strategy of the complete opposite, no significant increase at all, could work and/or, how a scenario for the continent could look like. @Tomas, would that be a (u)topic for an article?
" It makes drinking from the bottle or serving from them with just one hand wildly annoying. "
I live in Europe and use those bottles and cups and this change is grate. I really supper like it before when cup fall and i need to look after it. It also happen that put somewhere the cup and I needed to find it again. You need to put cup in special position to achieve annoying effect. No one is doing that. I do not have any issue with using bottle with only one had as before. This comment is dishonest and one sided.
I can no longer multitask making coffee and pouring milk to steam. Double the time taken. It adds up!! that and endlessly accepting cookies pisses me off no end.
How many manhours were wasted thinking of such rules, implementing , not to mention Joe public's time. This could have been focussed on implementing some of Tomas's excellent suggestions.
The premises you put forth as proven foundations for your arguments, seem both flawed and predicated on a specific ideology.
For instance, your measure of Productivity is based on
- GDP (which is a flawed metric, since it doesn't include any cost of destruction - if a country's infrastructure is damaged in a natural disaster, its GDP rises, because it needs to spend money rebuilding it)
- Capital stock (the stock markets have been largely disconnected from reality for more than a decade - the Shiller PE is through the roof)
- Employment (which doesn't account for people who need two jobs just to support themselves, and is a metric which devaluates e.g. University educations)
- Average Hours Worked (which is a spurious metric for measuring productivity - studies generally show that there's little productivity gain past 35-40 hours per week)
- Population (which is also a flawed metric - as some population segments require more care, but some of these segments are also an investment in the future.)
And this is your intellectual foundation for concluding that Europe is less "productive" than the US.
The article generally seems to be based on MBA-style thinking, where a few flawed metrics are used to draw vast, far-reaching and extremely simplified conclusions that anyone with common sense or a bit of wisdom can tell have little merit in reality.
There's also little perspective in the piece, and not a lot of interest in exploring root causes. For example, the GDPR regulation has been hamstringed by websites actively trying to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to opt out of cookies - because it benefits them long-term if the population can be soured on what is a prudent attempt at reining in the absurd levels of data collection.
You forgot about something. Even if our economy is poorer that USA's, our people are happier, our people have a higher quality of life and don't have to fear getting shot at any time outside home.
Plus, as the image you inserted tells, the main factors in calculating productivity are economics and financials and so, given the calculation's nature, it results that who has the highest avarage salary produces the most while in reality Europeans and Americans put the same struggle in their work
It is so much worse than you think. I was shot at 3 times just driving to work this morning. Most of my family has been shot at least once though none fatally yet. It is truly the Wild Wild West out here. Gotta go, I hear gunfire!
Because Americans are so happy after the last 50 years of neoliberal economics and now we're ecstatic to see our Constitution shredded to serve the greed and ambition of the tech billionaires who've decided most of us are just useless chunks of meat. Yep. That's the model for Europe.
Toma Pueyo, you did some good work during Covid, but mostly it seems you fall into the "don't know what you don't know" category. You may be very smart, but you're not wise. After your Network State city series and I'm just waiting to see how far right you'll go.
I agree that some of Tomas' points encouraging Silicon Valley-type solutions would be counterproductive.
His aversion to the new bottlecaps is weird to me because everytime I come across them I am reminded that I live in a place that cares, is innovative, and doesn't just whine and blame like the MAGAts fo.
But he makes other points that build on European values.
Thank you Tomás. I think there is a lot of wishful thinking in your piece today, starting with the very concept of Europe as... a Nation? Europe as a supranational entity has only glimpsed under Napoleon, and from the CECA/CEE onwards. It is an accumulation of ex-nation states that struggles to maintain its unity more than it acts to further it. The Empires you mention where Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, while these countries continually fought each other. To me, Europe as you mention it throughout the article, doesn't exist.... yet. I am fully with you in accepting that the nation states are doomed, and I do think there is potential to unify most "Europeans" around a set of common values, but there's still a lot to do to make this happen. Recently I reread "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation" from E. Renan. I'm not sure Europe is about to qualify as one.
I agree with almost everything in this article but there is zero chance of any of your valid suggestions materialising.
A disruptive force like Trump (however much we may dislike him) could be the only way to rid ourselves of entrenched additition to an overly generous social (and political) system.
The EU is run by those that have been rejected from national politics and most have never worked in the private sector. The minority that have, have no issue favouring their past employers by dubious allocation of contracts. It is rotten to the core.
De-regulation is a buzzword that remains just that. Tax cuts are necessary but impossible.
Dumb bottle caps and cookies (and thousands more things like it) are outrageous. (and yet no one is outraged) A smart Government (or smart people for that matter) would reverse bad decisions and make changes as we learn from our mistakes.
People have been conditioned to accept whatever is done as long as they can suckle at the teats of the state.
Vance was correct in his Munich speech, free speech is being eroded, not only by law but also by conditioning and guilt. We are not far off zombiedom.
As some of the comments here show, people do not want change and still believe the EU is better for them.
As for the idea of a nation state: it ain't gonna happen.
There is far too much distrust and pride to allow it. A french nuclear umbrella? Come on, who is going to believe that would actually be something anyone could rely on. History teaches us things (but apparently not enough)
National politics are a mess, the right is ostracised rather than being included in discussions around the table, therefore go from strength to strength; what is mostly a protest vote becomes entrenched. All avoidable but ignored. Further proof we are not governed by very smart people..
I wish I could be more positive but, short of a revolution, there is no hope.
to rid ourselves of the excess baggage that prevents us to thrive and be competitive. Urgently needed to pay for our rapidly aging continent. Certainly not for the tech overlords.
As people have pointed out, this article is just suggesting the path that the US has taken since Ronald Reagan. Not a successful one. American working people are beginning to coalesce around the realization that it's all been in service of the uber rich who now are more powerful than our government and who no longer have need of most of us. Read Thomas Piketty and sharpen the guillotines.
The majority of EU countries do not have right-leaning governments.
France and Germany certainly don’t. The next coalition in these countries is likely to be the usual centrist, indecisive mix they’ve had for years. If the CDU/CSU governed alone, it would be considered right, but that’s not the case.
Italy, on the other hand, does have a right-leaning government.
Spain, however, is firmly not in that camp. The Netherlands is a political patchwork and of teh 4 parties only 1 can be considered right (maybe "wing"). The UK, while European (though not in the EU), also doesn’t have a right-leaning government (far from it). Denmark and Poland don’t either.
When it comes to the far-right, the label often stems from their stance on immigration rather than their positions on pro-business policies or personal freedoms. In fact, many of these parties have policies that could be considered fairly socialist.
France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) and Germany’s AfD both have growing followings, but this seems to be more of a protest vote than a reflection of people’s genuine wishes.
There are very few countries where the right is in sole control of the government. At the moment, Finland, Hungary, and Italy come to mind. Most of the others are governed by coalitions. While I may have missed some, I believe the overall trend leans more center-left than right. It’s not as left-leaning as it was a few years ago, but it’s still predominantly center-left.
But these definaitions of left / right are a bit fluid and more recently erything seems to be described as left or right wing by the mianstream media. By definition suporting the centrist blob. Steady as she goes - until we founder.
If far-right parties weren’t boycotted and were instead engaged with, their incompetence might become evident. This could allow some of their valid ideas to be adopted by mainstream parties, ultimately weakening their influence.
That Europe you want to create looks like another USA. I wonder how many in the EU would want it? I wouldn't and I'm not even an EU citizen anymore.
That’s what European politicians tell me.
We’re all still too nationalistic.
We need to realize that this very belief is what makes the EU weak.
That weakness cost us very little in the past.
The bill is suddenly due.
Interesting. Your reply is more in line with what I have come to expect from you than your original post was. The post came across as pretty nationalistic, albeit in the form of a supranational European nationalism, complete with all the usual accoutrements of nationalism such as admonitions for the many to make sacrifices in order to defend the status and wealth of the few. I agree that the nations of Europe need to take back control of their destiny, either collectively or co-operatively, but that's about as much as I can agree with in your original post.
Hmm, I didn't notice any such implications. Who are the many who should sacrifice themselves for the few, and who are the few?
As I understand it, what sounded like nationalism was a call for the population to wake up and solve their problems. If you want to galvanize a group into action, praise is inevitable (You are strong! You can do it! as the coach says to the team). If that group is a population (Europeans), it will inevitably sound nationalistic, nothing can be done. But how would you wake them up in a different way, without any praise?
What I thought he said was: Yes, we are pathetic losers. But it hasn't always been that way! We know there have been better times! We can be strong again! - In the past, 'better times' meant conquering and killing other populations (not only for Europeans but for everybody); now it means good trade, beneficial for all sides.
I'd accept reality - there can never be a unified european state. There could be a conquered one, but it won't be stable.
TLDR; There's been too many people in Europe for too long for Unification.
This point of view requires that Europe be a single near-homogenous society with a shared commonality of history, language and culture, like the United States and Australia, Russia*, and less successfully, Canada, although it isn't.
<text removed - was not intended as reply to this comment. Sorry>
<Understood. Response retracted. Now I see the intended recipient, I concur with your statement.>
Sorry, this reply was not intended to your post.
It's a Zionist driven agenda, propaganda and agents. Trying to build what next they will sit on, suck and destroy. Where next they will build their thrones and 'get served' by Europeans, after the shameless things for a century in America. They are seeking to federalize Europe too. Same corrupt future scheme to rise for power after decaying USA. Probably want to control the Turks better and other Muslims (as if all their abuse in middle east and outside isn't enough, all the deaths 'caused')
Stop posting groundless hateful accusations.
You can keep being in denial and keep being fooled only for some time. I guess you enjoy disasters
You're entitled to your own opinions in your head. But if you choose to express them out loud, it's your responsibility to:
(1) Ground them in logic and facts
(2) Explain your reasoning to others
(3) Change them when better evidence emerges
Source: https://substack.com/@adamgrant/note/c-101742791?r=9fpns&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
That's nice. But you have to know the nature of conspiracies and changes. Anyway, enjoy, have your Europe go on war against Russia. If you ask who, how and why. Well, I already mentioned the z and the j
I tried ignoring your comments, but this is beyond the pale. You are delusional if you actually believe this nonsense and evil if you don’t believe it but post it anyway.
I replied to a different comment. But I'll reply here too something a bit different: enjoy your nuclear holocausts. Maybe then you will wake up on the z and J altogether with the money. But what will be left then?
GFY.
Not exciting. Reason yourselves into death. That's the hidden motive. There is no more sense to talk into the average westerners and their pharises. Maybe you didn't notice but there are governments preparing for survival, prolonged war and disasters. So yeah, reason yourselves into death, bow to the ones I already mentioned. Talk to me when you have a sovereign military and leadership, which you haven't had for 300 years or so, yeah that's despite the Nazi period and their acts.
Both analysis and prognosis are not "Pueyo level", because they are focused on the present. The entire content is well-known in Brussels.
And then:
> China is closing its cycle and it will take half a Century to reemerge
> Russia is not in great shape, especially after having exposed its miserable military condition
> The USA risks a civil war and perhaps even a decline: 4 years left for them to escape such fate (maybe)
> To be a military superpower, having a large population is not at all necessary (see Russia). Much less is it a sufficient one (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria)
> The EU has not aspired and does not aspire to become a superpower. It is the US insanity that is pushing it to arm itself
> Quality of life and net family wealth are higher in the EU than everywhere else
> EU aging will be offset by immigration. The biggest key challenge is managing immigration
PS: EU legislation has had some slips (imho GDPR and AI Act) and criticism (DMA, DSA). However, these too are seen as innovative and necessary steps towards regulating the digital economy and the "animal spirits" of capitalism. The world looks here to learn.
Thank you for the criticism!
China is destroying Germany’s car industry today, not tomorrow. It will likely attempt a takeover of Taiwan not in 50 years, but within 10.
Russia’s economy is. Penetrated towards the military. I wouldn’t bet on it crumbling immediately. If it wins, it will have co-opted a huge new population, and will be incentivized to grow more.
There is no way the U.S. will get into a civil war, and the next 4 years might be shitty for the coming if things continue this way, but the U.S. is structurally healthier for the economy than the EU.
Agreed that a large population is neither necessary nor sufficient for a strong army. But it definitely helps. Regardless this is not a core argument of my reasoning?
The EU has not aspired to become a superpower because it didn’t need to. Now it does. Because the “high quality of life” bill is coming due.
China has over 1B people, while Germany has less than 100M. Normally, China would produce cars for its local market and overproduce for export. But what we’re used to is a small country like Germany producing cars for the entire world. In my view, it was Germany that hurt China’s car industry by exporting German cars for decades, and now China is simply taking its rightful place. Germany still has its local market, but what it’s used to is overproducing and exporting. Not good what has happened in the history when Germany faces a risk in its exports.
That's not the perspective we're used to, but it is a fair one.
I agree, not the usual level…reusing some Lega Nord memes also was a bummer
Tomàs must have contracted a Large Language Model to write this 😉
I didn’t know this was Lega Nord!
I'm sorry, but I do not give a single French-fried fig about companies "suffering" because they're required to protect my personal data and forget me if asked. The privacy landscape in the US is horrific and getting worse; Europe doesn't need to emulate that dumpster fire.
So to make Europe thriving it must become US 2.0…why not searching for the European way of being a superpower of democracy and global multilateralism?
Which is?
This is not “US 2.0”.
This is the process of every single state that forms over time.
What do you think Germany was 150 years ago? A bunch of principalities and duchies and archbishoprics… then Bismarck came along and unified it.
The same is true for Italy with the Risorgimento.
The same is true for France, except over many more centuries. And Spain.
But it’s politicians’ job to see this, foresee what will come next, and accelerate the process.
The unification is desirable, but the abolishment of too much social security is for sure not
Not comparable. Those examples you mention represent the unification of *warring* states with a common cultural background. Major European powers have been at peace for 80 years.
I wish for all European languages to be preserved and celebrated, not overshadowed by a single institutional language for the sake of practicality.
The issue is the lack of leadership in Europe, the politicians in charge are Pedro Sanchez, Macron, Scholz and Starmer No more Bismarks, Talleyrands, de Gaulles or Churchills. In this times, great european minds enjoy their retirement drinking a daikiri in Palma or complain about the thetered caps.
Poor me that i have time to play with my kids after work, i can send the 7yo alone to buy groceries, i need not to worry about surviving if i am fired, i need no to pay a student loan for 30 years, i live in bustling livable city where people walks and bikes.
Even worse is to have 1 year of paid maternity leave (bad, bad, bad) and when i send kid to school, i don't have to worry that an unsong hero will enter the class with a AK-47 because freedom of speech is so inferior here. where is the thrill? life so boring...
Not too mention how unfortunate that EU billionaires are not as billionaires as US billionaires so they can't trickle down so much love and compassion.
Shameful that arguably the 2 most important companies in the world in 2025 (ASML and Novo Nordisk) are European, US desperately depends on both, and no US or Chinese company can replicate what they do despite decades of trying — nevertheless the toxic wasteland that is Facebook is worth more than both combined because ooooohhh the americans are so smart and productive.
And so so much overregulation in the EU, my goodness. Need to pay VAT in Europe? Report to OSS and they'll redirect to each country their part. In the US? Just deal with 10000 different tax regulations down to county level. So much easier!!
What a miserable life is to be in EU, really (except Hungary, the only cool ones at the moment)
I have time to play with my kids after work every day, my student loan payments are about 2% of my monthly income, I have 20 days of vacation a year plus state and federal holidays, and after I got laid off last year, state unemployment covered my essential bills in the month it took me to find a new job. Also, there hasn’t been a single gun crime in my town in decades, even with an avid hunting community and about 45% of people in my county having a pistol permit.
America has its problems, but it’s not hardly the dystopian hellhole many Europeans seem think it is.
I wish the author well in his efforts to promote a more independent and dynamic Europe. I fear he faces an uphill battle - as other commenters have noted, Europeans will need to let go of a lot of misconceptions and luxury beliefs before they can achieve their full potential on the international stage.
My wife is in LA right now for work in supposedly a nice and safe part of the city (close to Lakers stadium i believe): she has been told to never go out alone even during day. That sounds hellhole to me.
I worked for a large company with 50% workforce in US and 50% in EU. US mothers where at company conventions around the world 2 weeks after giving birth. if they got sick, they would take sick days out of holiday credits.
Lots of well paid US colleagues (better than EU folks) wished to move and live the EU.
Almost no one in EU wished the opposite except for a single demographic group: young-ish single white men without too many responsibilities in life.
Your posts are riddled with unsubstantiated assertions and non sequiturs.
Europe has passed their full potential on the international stage. That was in 1914 - 1918. Everything since then has been the throes of a dying giant.
oh are you romantizating colonization, aren't you? so alpha.
no, Europe has been as shit during 17-19 centuries as US during 20-21 centuries. US has now < 30 yrs left of unchallenged supremacy, and then will be Chinas turn to be the bullies of the world.
nothing to be proud of there, chap.
instead, Europe is the only place in the world that has been almost war-free in the last 80 years (save for balkans in 90's) with a focus on peace, union and prosperity never seen at that scale in whole human history
When Europe was great it was because of the trade opportunities resulting from colonial expansion. Some would call that exploitation, I don’t.
Importantly, you utterly failed to grasp the concept that the best of Europe’s young men were killed or broken in the trenches of WW1 and the survivors went home to societies that failed them. Everything that has happened since in Europe is the result of that demographic catastrophe.
And wtf is “as shit during 17-19 centuries as US during 20-21 centuries” supposed to mean?
I assume from your poor idiom that you’re German and can’t appropriately use the definite article or ordinal numbers; did you mean the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries?
Did you mean “as shit as” to be “as great as” or “as poorly behaved as” or “as backward as”? At any rate, what ever you meant it’s a poor choice of comparison for your inept argument. Whatever your intent, Europe is the worse in the comparison because although Europe was X 300 years ago, now the USA has supplanted it as X.
lol. the total lack of understanding and basic human empathy of you saying that the spoils of colonialism are not exploitation is very congruent with the total lack of understanding and basic human empathy of you trying to guess my nationality and resorting to surface -level arguments on eloquence of language used.
you failed to grasp that my family hs lived under a european dictatorial regime and i know first hand the value of shit you apparently always have enjoyed and taken for granted (now translate "shit" again)
Actually, I was insulting you, but thanks for trying.
Do you realise that you’re defending the abolition of European national identity and sovereignty by the amalgamation of the eu as a single state? And your argument for that is “America bad” based on hearsay?
This is so funny because half of Americans don’t pay income tax, the US has it’s own successful version of Novo (Eli Lily) and it was the US that invested the billions into ASML to make it is today (indeed at the time it was unheard of and a sign of great trust in the Dutch for the US to do such a thing)
I agree almost completely with the points made in the article. The issue here is that most europeans have these luxury beliefs deeply engrained in their identity. Net zero, the welfare state, pension and unemployment subsidies, ... Good times have created weak people, and now we must suffer tough times and start telling people the truth.
Many colleagues laugh at North Americans for their focus on work, while praising the excellent work-life balance they enjoy in Europe. I'm afraid that changing the narrative and accepting that our model is unsustainable is a hard pill to swallow for the vast majority of europeans.
The comments here are a live demonstration of the luxury beliefs you mention. So much delusion contained in so few words.
Europe thinks it’s the continent of enlightened pragmatism and balance. But it’s really just the continent of staleness, mediocrity, and irrelevance - and even that only for the time being. The debts are coming due.
Exactly. There's nothing special about Europe. The wealth we enjoy today was built with hard work over many years. The default state of humankind is poverty, if we stop focusing on growth and progress we will lose everything.
The European Parliament is a Russian center of espionage and an arena for Chinese and Russian influence operations.
There's no way out. Europe is done.
Another very good article, Tomas. I agree with many of your proposals. However, as with the previous article on Asian Development, how do you reconcile this with your view that the nation-state as a relevant political, economic and cultural entity is in decline, and that its days are numbered?
Can nation building be done on a continental scale when nationalism itself is disrupted by technologies that favor decentralization?
I owe you an answer!
But isn’t country aggregation kind of one of the few ways nation-states can fight? The more they control nice places to live, the more leverage they have on sovereign individuals. A market with 196 providers has much more competition than one with 5
Also, what is your take on "Can nation building be done on a continental scale when nationalism itself is disrupted by technologies that favor decentralization?" ? :)
Yes, it would be a way of making the fight more manageable for them.
But:
- it would not eliminate internal competition, and might exacerbate it. See Texas vs. California in the USA, for example.
- What other bloc could emerge in the next 30 years to constitute the equivalent of a federal EU? Mercosur? Extremely doubtful. Who else?
The EU is a process that started over 70 years ago, and is still far from completion.
- If only the EU manages to form a new federal bloc, it could exacerbate its well-known negative tendencies, described in this article, and prevent it from responding effectively to the exacerbated fiscal and demographic competition between countries.
All this at the same time as we are likely to see an explosion of different types of sovereignty, with special economic zones, free cities, network states, etc.
Europe doesn't need to be "great again" as you suggest in this article. What Europe needs is to continue being as good as it is, and this contains social welfare. If you destroy social welfare, or the environment by mining shale gas, then it's not worth fighting for the current values of Europe.
You have argued in the past in favour of European values. Why are you not holding them up here?
Countering Russia while keeping European values is, in my opinion, the right question. Some answers (from a different political avenue than yours):
- Tax the rich to get money for the rearm without underfunding social services
- Reinforce renewables so that we don't have to buy gas from anyone: not Russia, not the US, not anyone. Be independent (this also means: no nuclear rods coming from Russia)
- Open the door for immigration to fill in the population gap
- Keep workers' benefits so that professionals want to work for European companies instead of for the ultracapitalist ones.
- Keep investing on knowledge and science as the way forward for a society
- Keep protecting the environment
- And yes, keep a critical eye on what Europe does. Simplify things for companies without being detrimental to the society or the environment. Protect the local industry when it makes sense to do so. Simplify what needs simplification.
- Promote democracy. Maybe current European leaders are forgetting a bit about that nowadays, but there's no long-term society success without this.
This is my Europe. This is a Europe that can have a safe place in the world. This is a Europe worth fighting for.
“…German President-elect Merz is working on a constitutional amendment that allows unlimited defense spending… Germany isn't the only country doing its part. Most of Russia's bordering countries have vastly increased their military spending… Poland is considering developing its own nuclear bombs… Where there's a will, there's a way. What should Europe do? Europe needs to unite and increase its military spending.”
I'm disappointed and saddened to read all this. I considered you to be an extremely creative, progressive, and constructive person. Now I see I must add to that list: irresponsible.
I would have liked to see you explore the conditions for making Europe a safer place and how to integrate Russia there, instead of this call for militarism and confrontation.
There are sufficient signs in the news that RF in taking Europe's intended increase in military spending as a pretext for justified military interventions. I wonder how a strategy of the complete opposite, no significant increase at all, could work and/or, how a scenario for the continent could look like. @Tomas, would that be a (u)topic for an article?
Do you think the Baltics would remain free if they stopped preparing for the worst?
" It makes drinking from the bottle or serving from them with just one hand wildly annoying. "
I live in Europe and use those bottles and cups and this change is grate. I really supper like it before when cup fall and i need to look after it. It also happen that put somewhere the cup and I needed to find it again. You need to put cup in special position to achieve annoying effect. No one is doing that. I do not have any issue with using bottle with only one had as before. This comment is dishonest and one sided.
Ah I’m glad you like it. You’re the first one I meet that does!
I can no longer multitask making coffee and pouring milk to steam. Double the time taken. It adds up!! that and endlessly accepting cookies pisses me off no end.
How many manhours were wasted thinking of such rules, implementing , not to mention Joe public's time. This could have been focussed on implementing some of Tomas's excellent suggestions.
I like it too.
This piece is shockingly un-nuanced.
The premises you put forth as proven foundations for your arguments, seem both flawed and predicated on a specific ideology.
For instance, your measure of Productivity is based on
- GDP (which is a flawed metric, since it doesn't include any cost of destruction - if a country's infrastructure is damaged in a natural disaster, its GDP rises, because it needs to spend money rebuilding it)
- Capital stock (the stock markets have been largely disconnected from reality for more than a decade - the Shiller PE is through the roof)
- Employment (which doesn't account for people who need two jobs just to support themselves, and is a metric which devaluates e.g. University educations)
- Average Hours Worked (which is a spurious metric for measuring productivity - studies generally show that there's little productivity gain past 35-40 hours per week)
- Population (which is also a flawed metric - as some population segments require more care, but some of these segments are also an investment in the future.)
And this is your intellectual foundation for concluding that Europe is less "productive" than the US.
The article generally seems to be based on MBA-style thinking, where a few flawed metrics are used to draw vast, far-reaching and extremely simplified conclusions that anyone with common sense or a bit of wisdom can tell have little merit in reality.
There's also little perspective in the piece, and not a lot of interest in exploring root causes. For example, the GDPR regulation has been hamstringed by websites actively trying to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to opt out of cookies - because it benefits them long-term if the population can be soured on what is a prudent attempt at reining in the absurd levels of data collection.
This. Exactly this.
You forgot about something. Even if our economy is poorer that USA's, our people are happier, our people have a higher quality of life and don't have to fear getting shot at any time outside home.
Plus, as the image you inserted tells, the main factors in calculating productivity are economics and financials and so, given the calculation's nature, it results that who has the highest avarage salary produces the most while in reality Europeans and Americans put the same struggle in their work
It is so much worse than you think. I was shot at 3 times just driving to work this morning. Most of my family has been shot at least once though none fatally yet. It is truly the Wild Wild West out here. Gotta go, I hear gunfire!
Because Americans are so happy after the last 50 years of neoliberal economics and now we're ecstatic to see our Constitution shredded to serve the greed and ambition of the tech billionaires who've decided most of us are just useless chunks of meat. Yep. That's the model for Europe.
Toma Pueyo, you did some good work during Covid, but mostly it seems you fall into the "don't know what you don't know" category. You may be very smart, but you're not wise. After your Network State city series and I'm just waiting to see how far right you'll go.
I agree that some of Tomas' points encouraging Silicon Valley-type solutions would be counterproductive.
His aversion to the new bottlecaps is weird to me because everytime I come across them I am reminded that I live in a place that cares, is innovative, and doesn't just whine and blame like the MAGAts fo.
But he makes other points that build on European values.
Wow, all the hurt people here. This article is spot on, and as long as EU continues as is, I’m glad Switzerland is not in it.
Switzerland does none of all of these proposal and has the most permissive welfare (I used to live there).
I think you're wrong. On the summary page, Switzerland does at least 1, 2 and likely 5. 4 does not apply since it's a single country.
Regards from Switzerland.
Thank you Tomás. I think there is a lot of wishful thinking in your piece today, starting with the very concept of Europe as... a Nation? Europe as a supranational entity has only glimpsed under Napoleon, and from the CECA/CEE onwards. It is an accumulation of ex-nation states that struggles to maintain its unity more than it acts to further it. The Empires you mention where Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, while these countries continually fought each other. To me, Europe as you mention it throughout the article, doesn't exist.... yet. I am fully with you in accepting that the nation states are doomed, and I do think there is potential to unify most "Europeans" around a set of common values, but there's still a lot to do to make this happen. Recently I reread "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation" from E. Renan. I'm not sure Europe is about to qualify as one.
I agree with almost everything in this article but there is zero chance of any of your valid suggestions materialising.
A disruptive force like Trump (however much we may dislike him) could be the only way to rid ourselves of entrenched additition to an overly generous social (and political) system.
The EU is run by those that have been rejected from national politics and most have never worked in the private sector. The minority that have, have no issue favouring their past employers by dubious allocation of contracts. It is rotten to the core.
De-regulation is a buzzword that remains just that. Tax cuts are necessary but impossible.
Dumb bottle caps and cookies (and thousands more things like it) are outrageous. (and yet no one is outraged) A smart Government (or smart people for that matter) would reverse bad decisions and make changes as we learn from our mistakes.
People have been conditioned to accept whatever is done as long as they can suckle at the teats of the state.
Vance was correct in his Munich speech, free speech is being eroded, not only by law but also by conditioning and guilt. We are not far off zombiedom.
As some of the comments here show, people do not want change and still believe the EU is better for them.
As for the idea of a nation state: it ain't gonna happen.
There is far too much distrust and pride to allow it. A french nuclear umbrella? Come on, who is going to believe that would actually be something anyone could rely on. History teaches us things (but apparently not enough)
National politics are a mess, the right is ostracised rather than being included in discussions around the table, therefore go from strength to strength; what is mostly a protest vote becomes entrenched. All avoidable but ignored. Further proof we are not governed by very smart people..
I wish I could be more positive but, short of a revolution, there is no hope.
In other words, only overthrowing democracy to suit the needs of our tech overlords would work.
Sorry, you misspelled Brussels as tech.
to rid ourselves of the excess baggage that prevents us to thrive and be competitive. Urgently needed to pay for our rapidly aging continent. Certainly not for the tech overlords.
As people have pointed out, this article is just suggesting the path that the US has taken since Ronald Reagan. Not a successful one. American working people are beginning to coalesce around the realization that it's all been in service of the uber rich who now are more powerful than our government and who no longer have need of most of us. Read Thomas Piketty and sharpen the guillotines.
Ah, ok that explains it. If you appreciate Pikkety then your words are understandable. I, respectfully, belong to another camp.
The right is in power in many European countries, how is it ostracised?
The majority of EU countries do not have right-leaning governments.
France and Germany certainly don’t. The next coalition in these countries is likely to be the usual centrist, indecisive mix they’ve had for years. If the CDU/CSU governed alone, it would be considered right, but that’s not the case.
Italy, on the other hand, does have a right-leaning government.
Spain, however, is firmly not in that camp. The Netherlands is a political patchwork and of teh 4 parties only 1 can be considered right (maybe "wing"). The UK, while European (though not in the EU), also doesn’t have a right-leaning government (far from it). Denmark and Poland don’t either.
When it comes to the far-right, the label often stems from their stance on immigration rather than their positions on pro-business policies or personal freedoms. In fact, many of these parties have policies that could be considered fairly socialist.
France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) and Germany’s AfD both have growing followings, but this seems to be more of a protest vote than a reflection of people’s genuine wishes.
There are very few countries where the right is in sole control of the government. At the moment, Finland, Hungary, and Italy come to mind. Most of the others are governed by coalitions. While I may have missed some, I believe the overall trend leans more center-left than right. It’s not as left-leaning as it was a few years ago, but it’s still predominantly center-left.
But these definaitions of left / right are a bit fluid and more recently erything seems to be described as left or right wing by the mianstream media. By definition suporting the centrist blob. Steady as she goes - until we founder.
If far-right parties weren’t boycotted and were instead engaged with, their incompetence might become evident. This could allow some of their valid ideas to be adopted by mainstream parties, ultimately weakening their influence.