“The heart of Europe is getting poorer year after year compared to the American economy” | EUROtoday

DIn a latest discussion board, [l’économiste] Gabriel Zucman states that “the idea of ​​European sclerosis is not based on much”. He bases this conviction on the statement that, since 1990, the expansion of GDP per capita has been solely very barely slower throughout the European Union (EU), that’s to say in all of its present members, than within the United States, the chief of the superior economies. More exactly, annual progress was 1.6% among the many latter, in comparison with slightly below 1.5% in Europe.

In these circumstances, ought to we be involved concerning the relative slowdown of the European financial system? In phrases of stage, thirty years in the past, per capita revenue throughout the Atlantic was 25% greater, a determine barely greater in the present day. Furthermore, after we look carefully, this hole can be extra resulting from variations in working hours and employment charges, subsequently to a stronger choice for leisure, than to an actual productiveness hole, though the latter statement applies extra to Western Europe than to the whole space. But, all in all, the whole lot would not be so dangerous!

However, a extra worrying conclusion emerges after we now not contemplate the European Union as a complete however the nations that make it up. A robust dichotomy then seems between, on the one hand, the oldest members of the Union, concentrated in its western half, and, however, its more moderen members, particularly the nations of central and japanese Europe, the Baltic nations, Cyprus and Malta. It seems that it’s the latter which have enabled European progress to virtually match that of the opposite facet of the Atlantic. The performances of the opposite members, and specifically these of the six founding members, are a lot much less passable. At dwelling, the divergence from the United States is putting in its consistency. At a fee of half a degree of progress per yr, the delay accrued over the past three a long time is of the order of 20%. In complete, the hole in per capita revenue of the richest European nations in comparison with the United States was 10% in 1990, it’s 25% in the present day. What we will name the center of Europe is getting poorer yr after yr in comparison with the American financial system.

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