the 2026 for Europe: this is how the transatlantic is in the reckoning

Passing them off as a solution is tantamount to polishing the deck while the ship remains stubbornly moored. Without a strong increase in productivity, the European social model is mathematically unsustainable.

Immigration could help, but only if it is governed as a selective economic policy. Instead, Europe suffers it, moralises it, turns it into an identity flag and rarely governs it.

The result is an ocean liner with less and less qualified crew and no strategic route. The central issue remains productivity, or rather Europe's inability to accept the risk it implies. While artificial intelligence is reshaping global competitiveness, Europe is mainly discussing how to regulate it, not how to use it.

It is not ethics versus market: it is fear disguised as principle. Without widespread AI and investment on a continental scale, productivity will remain stuck.

To defend rigidities designed for the past is to condemn the future, with the moral consolation of feeling on the right side of history. Added to this is a structural contradiction: Europe celebrates the single market but accepts its daily fragmentation. Capital, services, data and businesses continue to move with difficulty.

To speak of economic sovereignty without scale is pure rhetoric. An ocean liner divided into watertight compartments does not go far, especially if others sail with more powerful engines. The international context makes everything more brutal. The United States is no longer the predictable pillar of the Western order.

Their industrial policy is openly nationalist. Continuing to hope that Washington will compensate for European weaknesses is a form of mental dependency before being strategic.

On the other hand, China is not a complicated partner but a systemic rival, with a model based on scale, subsidies and geopolitical use of the economy. Europe oscillates between naivety and moral indignation, risking being squeezed between American innovation and Chinese industrial power.

2026 must therefore mark a clear choice: growth is a political decision. If Europe does not grow, it is not because it cannot, but because it does not want to pay the price for change.

Putting growth back at the centre means accepting that stability and protection are not defended against innovation and investment, but only through them. It also means breaking with the dogma of unanimity: permanent consensus has produced paralysis, not cohesion. Better a multi-speed Europe than a stationary, perfectly regulated and perfectly useless Europe.

Above all, Europe must stop believing that regulating equals governing. Regulating without investing, regulating without scaling, defending without producing is a losing strategy.

Power does not come from moral superiority, but from the ability to transform technology, capital and labour into real growth. The year 2026 will draw a line. Either Europe sets sail, accepting the risk of the open sea and competition, or it will remain a magnificent ocean liner in port: safe, flawless, admired by those nostalgic for stability. But off course. Out of time. And irrelevant.