Too bureaucratic, too complicated and simply not competitive compared to the rest of the world: That is the picture that well-known entrepreneurs, association representatives and managers paint of the European Union. The President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA), Rainer Dulger, summed up his gloomy findings with the impressive formula: “The EU market loses importance with every day that dawns – even though it is actually the largest single market in the world”, he said on Thursday at the European Economic Conference in Berlin, a two-day event that the F.A.Z. carried out together with the European School of Management and Technology. The EU’s share of global gross domestic product has been falling for more than a decade. “We’re not as attractive as we think we are and we’re not as good as we think we are.”
Dissatisfaction is also spreading among young entrepreneurs. “We have always looked positively to the future. We always believed that we could do it,” said Laura Jorde, National Manager, Wirtschaftsjunioren Germany. But now young entrepreneurs are looking at Germany and Europe as a business location with pessimism because not much has changed in recent years, she said, listing: bureaucracy, a lack of digitization and the lack of skilled workers.