“The performance gaps between countries applying the same European rules are proof that it is not these rules that are at issue”

Lhe cause is now understood: from crisis to crisis (Lehman Brothers in 2008, Covid in 2020, Ukraine in 2022), Europeans are becoming poorer. The European Union (EU), structured since 1957 around economic policies, and within it the euro zone, although economically the most integrated, are falling behind their reference: the United States of America.

The numbers are stubborn. While the GDP per capita of the six founding countries tended to catch up with that of the United States between 1957 and the 1980s, the decline over the past fifteen years is significant: in 2008 the GDP of the euro zone was 13,082 billion euros, compared to 13,636 billion for the United States, a difference of 4%.

In 2022, the GDP of the euro zone is 15,837 billion euros, compared to 26,900 billion for the United States, a difference of 69%. GDP per capita was 43,105 and 76,290 euros respectively, a gap of 77% between an American citizen and a citizen of the Eurozone. France’s GDP was between those of the 48^e (Idaho) and 49^e (Arkansas) American state.

Dysfunctions of social services: national choices

As the European elections loom, there is a great temptation to blame European Union policies for these bad figures (which could also be put into perspective by including more qualitative criteria than GDP, such as such as life expectancy, literacy, violence). It is a mistake. If we consider the case of France, let us first observe that the feeling – largely legitimate – of impoverishment of the French, results largely, beyond the figures, from the deterioration that they perceive of public services: health, school, public safety, postal services.

However, none of these services is under the responsibility of the EU; their dysfunctions are the result of strictly national or local errors and bad choices. Then, if we focus on the GDP itself, it is not useless, while the American economist Robert Solow (1924-2023), Nobel Prize winner in 1987, has just died, to use the model of growth that he had theorized. He explains that growth results from quantitative (labor and capital) and qualitative (general factor productivity) factors. Let’s focus on the work factor.

The lack of growth in France is partly the result of a lack of work. Simply put: taken as a whole, the French do not work enough. This lack takes several forms: employment rate, annual number of hours worked. On these two points, the EU is in no way responsible.

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