A decade after the financial crisis began, capitalism, a social arrangement designed to help people by providing capital for companies to innovate, grow and create jobs, is still failing. The crisis starved the economy of capital.
As well as leading to calls for greater protectionism, this failure poses a clear and present threat to the economic future of Europe itself: the EU is creating neither the companies, nor the jobs, of tomorrow. While 60 per cent of the world’s most valuable companies come from America, less than 15 per cent come from Europe — down from 30 per cent a decade ago. And China is catching up fast.
With youth unemployment close to 20 per cent, time is running out to reform the EU economy so that it works for all 500m citizens. The public sector can no longer provide increasing numbers of jobs, while big corporates have not created net new jobs since the crisis.