The United States has pulled ahead of the European Union in economic development, and the gap is particularly glaring when comparing the EU’s southern member states with America. While northern Europe manages to keep pace, the south has lost 25 percentage points of GDP per capita in purchasing power parity terms over the last quarter century.
The economic divergence between the US and the EU has become a central concern for European policymakers. The bloc’s firms suffer from weaker competitiveness, burdened by excessive administrative red tape. Nordic countries, especially Sweden, are leading the call for deregulation at the EU level.
– There is a huge need for cooperation – not just between Poland and Sweden, but among all EU member states – on competitiveness. The European Union really needs to boost its competitiveness. Poland and Sweden can contribute to making it easier for companies to operate in the EU. Currently it is difficult. Each country has different rules. There are too many regulations in the EU – said Martina Quick, Sweden’s ambassador to Poland.
The south lags, the north competes
According to calculations by the Polish Economic Institute (PIE), between 2000 and 2024, GDP per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms in Southern Europe – Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Malta, and Portugal – grew 25 percentage points slower than in the US. In contrast, Northern European countries – Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden – fared significantly better. Their PPP GDP per capita outperformed the US by between 6.6 and 16 percentage points over the same period. These northern states are the only EU members that have seen consistent improvement relative to the US in PPP GDP per hour worked.
Technological sovereignty as a response
The European Commission has responded with an ambitious initiative on technological sovereignty. In late May 2026, the EC presented a package aimed at reducing the EU’s dependency on non-EU suppliers for critical digital technologies, including semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and cloud services. The package is part of a broader narrative shift among EU institutions and business support organisations toward accelerating the adoption of high-tech fields such as automation, AI, and quantum computing. The goal is to narrow the gap with the US and build genuine competitive muscle.
The gap between the EU and the US is not uniform. While the north is holding its own and even pulling ahead on some productivity metrics, the south faces structural challenges that require targeted policy interventions. The question remains whether Europe’s new push for technological sovereignty and deregulation can be implemented fast enough to change the current trajectory.
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. Unsplash/steelprint
