Re: It's taken just five years for progressive Ursula von der Leyen to destroy Europe's economy

[Progressive poison]

On 26 Mar 2022, Wi1liam T T <willy...@yahooomail.com> posted some
news:t1nknq$35f97$2...@news.freedyn.de:

> Biden / Obama are taking the USA down the same path. Make no mistake,
> Obama is pulling the levers behind the scenes and making Biden the
> patsy.

She steered the continent through the pandemic. She has massively
increased the powers of the European Commission. And she has led a
response to the challenges of climate change, Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine, and competition from China.

Ursula von der Leyen might well have convinced herself of the strength of
her record when she launched her bid for five more years as President of
the Commission on Monday. There’s a problem, however. She has been a
disaster for the European economy. Over the last five years, she has
launched a ruinously expensive round of borrowing as well as a green
strategy that will de-industrialise the continent, all while imposing
round after round of growth-destroying regulations. On Von der Leyen’s
watch, the EU has fallen decisively behind the rest of the world – and
there is little hope of it recovering during a second term.

In many ways, Von der Leyen has been the most significant EU Commission
President since Jacques Delors, the father of the single currency and the
single market, back in the 1980s. The comical Jacques Santer, another of
her predecessors, left little mark. The same was true of José Manuel
Barroso and Romano Prodi.

But over the last five years, Von Der Leyen has overseen the final
departure of the UK from the bloc; taken control of healthcare policy
during the pandemic; launched the EU’s first major round of borrowing;
introduced a climate change strategy; and vastly increased the power of
the Brussels machine over industrial policy. It is quite a list.

The trouble is that Von der Leyen has also been a disaster for Europe’s
economy. Europe’s performance, just like that of the UK, had been slipping
for a decade or more, but it was over the last five years that the gap
with the United States, and China, became more and more painfully obvious.
By the end of last year, US GDP was 8.2pc higher than its 2019 level. For
the eurozone, output was only 3pc higher.

Major economies such as France, only up by 1.8pc over five years, and
Germany, with just a 0.1pc increase, performed even more poorly. Sure,
Europe was hit by the pandemic. But so was every other country in the
world. The EU is now slipping back into recession as much of the rest of
the world steams ahead.

Von der Leyen’s catastrophic mis-management of the Commission is one of
the major reasons for that. There have been three big problems. First, she
has massively increased the amount the Commission borrows, launching a 700
billion euro Covid Recovery Fund, and issuing its own bonds for the first
time.

This was meant to mark the start of a fiscal union to match the EU’s
monetary union, and finally rescue the economies of countries such as
Italy, which received large chunks of the cash.

Three years later, it is clear that it has done nothing to accelerate
growth, that huge amounts of money have been wasted on vanity projects,
and that it has failed to drag Italy out of its near-permanent recession
(it grew by just 0.6pc last year, with 0.7 per cent forecast for 2024).
The borrowed money still has to be repaid somehow, but there is little to
show for it.

Next, Von der Leyen launched a massively expensive “Green New Deal” that
was designed to turn the continent into a global leader in combating
climate change as well as make its industries far more competitive against
their main rivals.

It included a carbon border tax that looked suspiciously like disguised
protectionism, and vast subsidies to take a global lead in alternative
energies.

And yet, the results have been dismal. Europe’s once world-beating auto
industry is getting wiped out because it can’t compete with cheaper
Chinese models, the continent is dependent on Chinese imports of equipment
for wind and solar power, industry has been decimated by soaring costs,
and it has been out-competed by better designed and bigger subsidies
offered by President Biden in the US.

At the same time, the “farm to fork” strategy that Von der Leyen launched
in 2020, restricting the use of pesticides along with dozens of
environmental targets for agriculture, has proved ruinously expensive,
triggering a wave of protests in France, Spain, and Germany, as furious
farmers take to the streets.

Finally, all the extra powers the EU has accumulated for itself over the
last five years have mainly been used to destroy innovation, and micro-
manage the bloc’s way to economic irrelevance. The mandarins in Brussels
boast about being a “regulatory superpower”, as if it were pen-pushers and
law-makers instead of entrepreneurs and businesses that created new
wealth.

Take Artificial Intelligence, the most exciting industry in the world
right now, and one where Europe could be a world leader.

The absurdly cumbersome AI Act from the EU imposes huge costs that will
crush start-ups and deter investment – even President Macron in France,
hardly a free-marketeer, criticised it in public – killing off a new
industry before it has even had a chance to establish itself. The result?
China and the US will dominate the sector, and the EU, as in the rest of
the tech industry, will be nowhere.

Just like the UK, the EU desperately needs to grow faster. It is falling
behind in key industries, Europe’s welfare states are increasingly
unaffordable, and its mountains of debt keep on growing. Its share of the
global economy has fallen from around 30pc 20 years ago to 15pc now. But
there is little chance of faster growth under five more years of Von der
Leyen’s inept leadership. Instead it will simply decline into greater and
greater irrelevance.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/five-years-ursula-von-der-
leyen-destroy-europe-economy/?li_source=LI&li_medium=for_you