Europe's super power is regulation

Economist: How Europe regulated itself into American vassalage:

Decades of over-regulating the old continent’s economy left businesses there unable to compete with American firms, which went on to trounce European ones even in their own backyards. ...

The annoying thing is that, taken individually, each piece of euro-regulation is laudable. Yes, Europe should aim for “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Of course regulating AI is sensible, lest the robots turn on us one day. Firm antitrust rules enforced by the EU have served consumers well, and so on. But taken together the effect has been a tangle of red tape that has left Europe awkwardly exposed. Efforts are afoot to get to grips with some of the more unappealing dependencies; next month the commission will unveil a “tech sovereignty package”. But it remains to be seen whether Europe can escape its role as a superpower in rule-making, yet a supplicant in everything else that matters.