This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome Joseph Sternberg. He is the political

economics columnist for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. He's in London. And he's looking at the

European Union. Britain is not a member of the European Union formally.

However, there are sympathetic sounds all the time from the labor government.

So I'm going to regard the whole thing, as it was before Brexit.

As troubled by a chart, Joseph brings me to, to show that the European Union was closing on living as well as the U.S.

until sometime between 1975 and 1985 when the flatlining began.

And what is to be done?

Joseph's new column points me to a new European Renaissance, the Constitution of Innovation by Louis Garciano,

Banked Homstrom, and Nicholas Petit or Petit, just issued this fall, and it is a revelation

that the Europeans are doing what everybody has to when they've got a problem.

They're admitting they have a problem.

Joe, a very good evening to you.

Thank you.

The problem is lack of growth, or is the problem accepting that the lack of growth is us?

Good evening, Joe.

Hey, John.

Well, I mean, it's basically all of the above because I think that sort of the story of the past few years in Europe's economy has been,

you know, first off, various crises. So they had an energy price crisis occasioned by the

Russian invasion of Ukraine and the implications of that for the gas and oil markets. Yeah, they have an economic and industrial crisis that has been caused by their pursuit of net zero climate policies.

They had the same COVID pandemic crisis the rest of the world had, you know, which had various bad economic consequences for the continent.

And hanging over all of this is a much bigger problem, this growing awareness that Europe's economy is just falling seriously behind the U.S.

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