Stagnation and evasion: Europe’s long-term development challenges in a shifting world

Europe’s institutional disorder is just the surface of a deeper crisis: a four-decade-long structural decline in overall competitiveness, paired with a pervasive culture of evasion and blame-shifting.

To make matters worse, the relative decline of the United States and its intractable domestic problems have brought unprecedented external pressures to the whole of Europe.

Looking back over the past 40 to 50 years, Europe has lagged far behind other major economies in technological innovation, industrial strength, governance efficiency and social development.

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