Europeans are less hardworking, less ambitious, more regulated, and less risk-prone than Americans, and this gap is not being bridged but is widening. This was not stated by some passing American businessman traveling through regulated, social Europe, but by Nicolai Tangen, the head of the Nordic investment giant Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages 1.6 trillion dollars in revenue generated from Norwegian oil and gas resources. A few days ago, he loudly stated for the FT that American companies outperform European ones in innovation growth and technology development, resulting in stellar performances of American stocks. Therefore, it is not surprising that his fund invests almost half of its assets in American stocks (in 2013, their share was 32 percent), while reducing exposure to European ones. Twenty years ago, European investments held 60 percent of the total, but this was more than halved last year, to just 28.7 percent. The poor earning opportunities in Europe are illustrated by the fact that the fund even reduced its stake in the former flagship, Great Britain, from 15 to just five percent in its portfolio.
Airbus as an example
So unproductive, unambitious, without an appetite for breakthrough, caught in the firm grip of directives, guidelines, regulations, standards, criteria, measurements, and overall overregulation, the European Union is losing the last thread that ties it to the modern economic world. It has lost all positions in all key industries and sectors. Due to the late ignition of the electric drive, the automotive industry is dying. The Chips Act has not initiated competitive production of this essence of modern times (the Act has been in force for less than eight months, too little to awaken the famous Brussels ‘efficiency’). The production of solar panels and batteries is so expensive that it intends to deal with cheaper Chinese competition in the American way, through ‘fair’ investigations into Chinese dumping. Consequently, we do not have secured energy sources either (everything has already been said about the sense, speed, and actual reach of the Green Plan and transition; after all, the Chinese are more serious even in the green story). Again consequently, a number of energy-intensive sectors, such as glass, metal, chemicals, fertilizers, paper, and cement producers, have lost positions. The same applies to shipbuilding (South Korea and China have taken the lead). In times of war, we do not have a military industry, and in the age of AI, we are merely users, not innovators. Okay, we do not intend to focus on what we do not have but on what we (potentially) have, while identifying focal points of lost competitiveness. All interlocutors agree that Airbus is an excellent example of how the EU should operate in all other fields.
