European companies can't compete against global giants
theguardian.comI suspect this is a matter of ideologies. A constellation of tangential policies derived from various ideological values widely held in Europe conspire to make it difficult for tech giants to exist.
You can't build a boat if you don't recognise the existence of the sea, are opposed to things that float and require all boats to have holes in them.
It's obvious when stated like that, but now replace the boat with attitudes and policies that indirectly affect the viability of tech startups.
At the same time people across the pond begin to wake up to the dangers of monopolies and start calling for the break up of the tech giants.
What a propaganda article
"Under the pretext of protecting the European consumer from the creation of a potential monopoly, Brussels prevented the French and German companies from becoming a world leader in rail, even though their main competitor, the Chinese CRRC, is already twice as big as Alstom and Siemens combined."
Pretext? Really? How about it did actually protect the European consumer from the creation of a potential monopoly?
"“It seems certain that electrification will permanently penalise the German economy over the next few years,” said Dirk Schumacher, an economist at Natixis, who believes that if nothing is done, Germany’s car sector could lose half a million jobs by 2030."
German car industry has only itself to blame. They dragged their feet for years and engaged in diesel frauds instead of investing in EV. Creating a monopoly is not gonna fix that.
EDIT: formatting
It did not protect consumers against anything.
As often this was a decision to uphold ideological purity in the face of reality and at the expense of European industry itself.