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The EU is sleepwalking into a profound, decades long structural productivity crisis. Yet Europe’s political elite – armed with the highly praised Draghi Report and the new ‘Competitiveness Compass’ – are prescribing a toxic cure: massive state subsidies, protectionist trade barriers and top-down industrial planning.
In Delusions of Competitiveness, Alexander Horn ruthlessly dismantles the Brussels consensus. He exposes how an entrenched culture of dependency, ‘green’ anti-growth ideologies and a deep fear of risk have led to the dangerous zombification of the European economy. Rather than driving technological innovation, the EU is propping up uncompetitive business models and regulating dynamic challengers out of existence with a tsunami of bureaucracy. Europe cannot subsidise, protect or regulate its way to prosperity.
Horn argues that to avoid inevitable decline, the EU must abandon its ‘cheap money’ policies and embrace the politically painful reality of ‘creative destruction’ – stripping away market barriers so that true, unbridled competition can thrive.
A hard-hitting, provocative must-read for anyone who wants to know why Europe is truly falling behind – and the radical steps required to save it.
About the author
Dipl. Wirtsch. Ing. Alexander Horn is a management consultant and writer based in Frankfurt am Main.
After studying industrial engineering at TU Darmstadt and aeronautical engineering at the University of Bristol, he took on senior positions in production and logistics at various medium sized companies in the automotive supply industry. Since 2010, he has been working in industry as an independent lean consultant. He is co-founder and co-editor of the political magazine Novo-Argumente, which has been in existence since 1992, and he publishes articles on specialist topics in the field of logistics as well as on economic and regulatory policy issues in specialist and political media. Alexander is the author of several books, including Die Zombiewirtschaft: Warum die Politik Innova tionen behindert und die Unternehmen in Deutschland zu Wohlstandbremsen geworden sind and Experimente statt Experten: Plädoyer für eine Wiederbele bung der Demokratie.
