A fever is not caused by the disease, but by the Immune Response...

Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland, reports to the European Commission in Brussels:

Europe's most successful companies are turning their backs on EU markets because of red tape, a high-level report said yesterday...

...The findings made unsettling reading for the EU leaders, ripping into their pledges to build a "knowledge-based Europe" that would overtake America in 10 years.

The reality was the opposite. Not only were US, Chinese and Japanese firms outspending Europe on research and development, the gap with Europe was growing.

Perhaps most damagingly, Europe's most important countries were pouring more and more of their technology investment overseas, as they despaired of the European Union becoming "innovation friendly"....(Thanks to Betsy N)

What's most important to watch is not the problems--we all got problems--but the response. When people like me say that Europe is dying, it's because we expect no renovatio, no movements of reform and renewal to arise.

There are no grass-roots movements big enough to make changes. No cowboys will be elected, no Reagans, no Bush...not even a Schwarzenegger. There's no "Culture War," no National Review, no AEI, no Rush Limbaughs.

Here in the US we have a competitiveness problem of our own, in the blood-sucking lawsuits that hinder every move we make. BUT, we also have an immune response, with Tort Reform being high on the Republican agenda. (It will be an up-hill battle, with the Democrat Party being a wholly-owned subsidiary of those leeches. But that's one of the reasons Republicans are now in the majority. We are anti-bodies generated by parasitic infections.)

When you are sick, and have a fever, the fever is not caused by the disease, but by your immune system fighting back. I predict the Europe will not be running a temperature as a result of these obvious problems...That's a sign of imminent death.

(I pasted some more of the report below)

...Unless EU governments took bold action to increase spending on research, freed labour markets so skilled workers could move more easily, and stopped pouring taxpayers' money into dying industries, Europe's post-war way of life was doomed....

...His report listed a string of gloomy indicators. In 1992, six out of the 10 top-selling pharmaceuticals were produced by European companies. In 2002, this figure had fallen down to two. European firms invested billions more in the United States than US firms invested in Europe....

...European governments were criticised for continuing to pour state aid into dying industries such as cars, steel and textiles. As part of the so-called Lisbon agenda of 2001 EU leaders committed themselves to spending three per cent of their gross domestic product on research and development.

Halfway through the 10-year Lisbon agenda programme, the EU still spent a meagre 1.9 per cent, far behind the US or Japan....