[dredmorbius]

Also: Concorde. The Chunnel. The Gotthard Base Tunnel. The Øresund Bridge/Tunnel. Airbus A-380. Numerous flood barriers and barricades (Thames, Netherlands, Venice, ...). European Southern Observatory.[1]

Proposals for bridging the Straits of Gibraltar, Norway's E39 project, the EU project as a whole, and Energiewende (and its various national counterparts) would also strike me as major forward-thinking endeavours.

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Notes:

1. My focus is on technical rather than economic success here, though each project mentioned here did go operational, and all but Concorde remain so. Economic viability is a challenge for most megaprojects.

[_dain_]

Energiewende is a failure in both technical and economic senses: half a trillion euros spent to get a more expensive and less reliable power grid, and a fleet of perfectly functional nuclear power plants were spitefully binned.

[dredmorbius]

The claim I was answering was that Europe was no longer willing or capable to undertake "really ambitious technical things".

Really ambitious technical things by their very nature have uncertain outcomes and may prove spectacular, or even slow-motion failures. Concorde was only very barely commercially viable (if that) and ultimately exhibited fatal engineering flaws, as well as susceptibility to alternative (though slower) private jets with more flexible scheduling; still, it flew commercially for 27 years. The Channel Tunnel would have bankrupted the corporation building and operating it (Eurotunnel) without government bailouts.[1] The Airbus A380 has similarly proved a commercial failure with production halted at 254 units built in 18 years, compare against Boeing's 747 with 1,574 units over 55 years.[2]

Even accepting your characterisation of Energiewende as a failure, which I do not, it absolutely IS a "really ambitoius technical" project. And hence refutes the specious assertions of ur-whale.

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Notes:

1. "Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition" <http://www.josephcoates.com/pdf_files/268_Megaprojects_and_R...> (PDF)

2. Wikipedia provides both Airbus's and Boeing's production years and units.