The problem is that the EU doesn't do industrial policy. In fact, it explicitly prohibits industrial policy as "unfair state support." Some companies (Siemens, Vestas, Vattenfall, etc.) are big enough and powerful enough that they can make their own industrial policy when the state fails to have one. Others... not so much. Trouble is, those companies are mainly located in the countries with structural balance of payment surpluses. So the rules tend to promote de-industrialisation of precisely the parts of Europe that are most in need of serious industrial policy to repair their balance of payments, since the € takes away their ability to conduct fiscal, monetary or ForEx policy according to their own needs.

(Oh, and there's the same sort of perverse incentive in this fixation on "markets" as in the US: The armaments industry, being a matter of "national security" is largely exempt from the no-industrial-policy clause...)

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

Experts warn that all Croatian shipyards need a radical overhaul, saying they are technologically inferior and suffer from low productivity, overstaffing and outdated management.

Who are these "experts" and how is this statement reconciled with Starvid's comment above?

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."