This column is published in parallel with a speech given at the College of Europe in Bruges, which can be found on the Banque de France website.
We Europeans face a painful paradox: over the past twenty years, two crises on other continents have inflicted more damage on our economy than on those of the United States or Asia.
The 2008 financial crisis began in the United States and the 2020 pandemic in China.
Yet by the mid-2010s, the United States had returned to its pre-crisis growth path, while Europe was lagging significantly behind.
In 2020, the GDP of the United States fell by 3.5%, while that of the euro area fell by 6.6%: it is almost twice as much.
China has withstood these two periods very well;
it even recorded positive growth last year, despite lockdowns.
So what is holding back Europe?
To use an analogy with physics, the power corresponds
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