‘The EU is in a funk’, I said on this blog a few days ago. I think malaise would have been more accurate. Funk involves panic, according to my dictionary. When I observe the EU, I’m not sure that I see panic. Yet the picture is grim.

Using macrotrends.net as my source for economic data, the average rate of growth in GDP in the EU zone over the 10 years to 2021 was 1.2%pa.

Not so bad? Until I report that the equivalent measure of growth in North America was 2.1%pa, not far short of double. Relative to residents of the EU zone, national wealth in North America was 10% higher after those 10 years. The Europeans are falling behind.

It gets worse. Germany is the driver of the EU economic growth. Attentive readers will remember me posting that Germany is deindustrialising. A shrinking Germany will pose serious problems for the citizens of the EU zone. Germany is now in recession.

Do the preening bureaucrats in Brussels know what they are doing? I suspect not. If ever there was a more incompetent politician than Ursula von der Leyen you’d need to go to Dan Andrews in Victoria, Australia for competition. They both get promoted the more they fail.

The EU is rapidly disappearing as a power bloc of note. Today, it’s US, China and the rest.