[machinekob]

Weird how Western Europe stagnated after 1990, only Germany get some more “gas” for growth thanks to CEE and cheap energy. now it seems that importing tens of millions of low skilled refugees and workers with high social benefits is killing any innovation while taxing middle class and all high skilled Europeans prefer to move to US or even east Asia.

Which makes whole industry lag behinds and UK is probably biggest example of that it is just big banking and service hub with no money for any investments in infrastructure outside London making it more and more depending on single city with legacy service sector. Even Poles are coming back to Poland a country that was 7-10 times poorer 20 years ago.

[inglor_cz]

Europe failed to keep its bureaucracy at bay.

There were times in the 1990s when people like the Dutch commissioner Frits Bolkenstein sincerely tried to liberalize and open the internal market.

But at least since Brexit, possibly earlier, the EU has made a turn towards protectionism and closedness (at least economically; as you mention, it is way, way easier to ship people from Africa into the EU than bananas), a French attitude so to say.

Frankly, we the Czechs are missing Britain in the fold. It was a balancing power against the Franco-German attempts to micromanage and regulate absolutely anything. Together with NL and DK, they were a force for economic freedom within the Union.

BTW other nations are threatened by the very same development, see the shenanigans around FAA and their überlengthy process of licensing of space launches. But I am more optimistic about the US being able to cut red tape than the EU.

[WhereIsTheTruth]

Something tells me you are a brit living in CZ. Am I wrong?

[lispm]

The British voted for Brexit to enjoy poorer standards.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/...

Good luck with removing "red tape".

[inglor_cz]

By putting red tape in scare quotes, do you want to express an opinion that every regulation is good and red tape is just a myth? More papers, more prosperity, without any limits or any inflection point?

[lispm]

The UK has argued for the Brexit with red tape removal, in practice this meant less protection.

Standards are useful. To be outside a large population area of standardization and regulation only means, that nobody cares about your small-country standards and that the population gets the worst of both worlds: inferior local standards and very little influence in international standards.