Europe’s problem is not a shortage of ideas or of engineers. It is a shortage of permission. For three decades, we told ourselves that a high-cost, high-rule, high-centralisation model could be made compatible with fast growth so long as the world stayed calm and capital stayed cheap. That world is gone. The next growth story will belong to places that excel at the basics: abundant energy, flexible work, simple and stable rules, openness to trade and investment. The question is whether Europe chooses to be one of them.
