PC and x86 took us pretty far... And that was mostly carried on interoperability... I doubt we would have gotten to technology being as ubiquitous as it is without it.
Funny enough, France's failed internet, the Minitel would probably be the solution pushed today by the EU.
The Internet won on the free market, through its own merits. No politician intervention necessary. Even if plenty tried to capture the glory (information superhighway…)
Do you have any credible sources to base that claim on, other than "let's paint the government as idiots"? Did you know that TCP/IP was based on that other "failed" french network, Cyclades?
I'm all in favour the EU doing what it's doing, but x86 is actually a good example to not enforce this standard. Imagine that the EU enforced x86 as well, what would've happened to ARM ?