THE DROPOUTS:

The real problem with Europe (Martin Walker, 5/31/2004, UPI)

Whatever happened to the European economies? Since 1990, the big three continental economies of Germany, France and Italy have grown at an average rate of less than 1.7 percent a year. By contrast, the United States grew almost twice as fast over the same period.

One result of this became strikingly clear last week when the German edition of the Financial Times published a league table of the world's 100 "most valuable" companies (which means ranked by market capitalization). Were it not for the British, whose refusal to join the euro currency renders them semi-detached, the Europeans would be dropping out of contention. [...]

No wonder that Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, in his appearance before the European Union's Economic and Social Committee last week lamented that Europe needed "a radical change."

Prodi was testifying on something called the Lisbon strategy, a highly ambitious plan drawn up at the EU summit in Lisbon in 2000 that was supposed to deliver the "most competitive economy in the world by 2010." The strategy called for liberalization of labor markets, intensified competition, Europe-wide coordination of education and skills training, and reform of corporation taxes and incentives for research. The "social partners," as the EU dubs the representatives of the EU's federations of labor unions and of employers, were to be brought into the process. And this was all to be combined with a budget and investment strategy that was supposed to unleash the talents of Europe and catch up -- and even overtake -- the great spurt the American economy had displayed in the 1990s.

Instead, the Lisbon strategy has become something of a joke.

They dropped out of contention decades ago when they lost their religious faith, stopped having children and became willing dependents of the Welfare State.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2004 9:14 AM