I have been traveling a lot in the last months and I have some things to say about it. The pressure to reduce costs in most countries has meanwhile led to a level of reduced service that threatens the one fundamental advantage Europa has over the US: great infrastructure.
Rail travel with Deutsche Bahn, the german railway has never been a great experience, but compared to what you get in the Netherlands it is paradise. All the countries that have been held up high and shiny by german and international press as examples of good economic reform have serverely deteriorated public infrastructure now. Great Britan, the motherland of railway has become the laughing stock of the world when it comes to train travel.
The health infrastructure in the Netherlands is now so bad that the german expats that live in Amsterdam go back to Germany for extensive medical procedures like surgery, because you can happen to wait a few months for an appointment. Rail travel is frequently an ordeal that reminds of eastern Europe in the 80's. Old trains, fucked up trainstations, time schedules that are only a rough orientation...
France has roads of such low quality that make you think how this country managed to built ICBMs by themselfes. Maybe they borrowed some help from the Russians in exchange for the Concorde blueprints ;-). One of the times I escaped from Paris was rather narrow. The money transport drivers were on strike, so the ATMs spat out way too little money for the cab to the airport. The garbage truck drivers were also on strike, so the trash was piling along the streets. But since that was not nearly enough to annoy the hell out of everybody, they drove their garbage trucks on all lanes of the highway to the airport, at 30km/h. Truly a grand nation.
The only nations that seem to have resisted the drive to ever lower standards with rampant disregard for the long-term effects at least a bit are Switzerland, Austria and Germany. But the question remains how long this will hold up. The americanization of everything seems to include the drive to infrastructure that is as shitty as in the US. I don't see a reason why that would be desirable.
First rate public infrastructure is a major economic advantage. Reducing investment and driving privatization of assets in the name of "efficiency" will ruin that advantage quickly. Berlin is a good example for that. The ruling clique here managed to extract some billion Euros for their buddies from the coffers of Berliner Bankgesellschaft. The City of Berlin guarantees for the sum and needs to pay for this guarantee now, resulting in waves after waves of cuttings in public spending. But instead of using the chance and get rid of the local oversized bureaucracy, now the Berlin universities will be reduced to smoking ruins. The long term damage to the city will be tremendous.
The only thing that might save the Berlin local government from an prolonged and actually successful student strike is Christmas, likely the movement will peter out.
It's not only the public sector that is getting infected by the "cutting corners virus". Private companies are deliberately reducing their service levels in ways that can only be described as annoying. KLM routinely overbooks the last flight from Amsterdam to Berlin on a friday evening by more then 10%. Of course the very beautiful lady at the gate was terribly sorry about that, but "thats the airline, not me! I can do nothing about it.". I heard that sentence about five time during the following two and a half hours that it took me to get out of the airport again.
The whole structure is deliberately set to make it impossible to talk to someone in charge. Or actually get any qualified feedback. KLM just tried to leave the impression of fulfilling the relevant EU guidelines, but actually violated it subtly and deliberately to save costs. If there were any other airline servicing Berlin-Amsterdam, I would never ever fly KLM again. Their seat usage planing software must be a piece of obsolete crap. Another good example how bad software and bad process design causes mayhem.
Anyway, Europe needs to understand that good infrastructure for business, travel, research and development is absolutely necessary to stay somewhere on the top of the world. Software will come from India, consumer goods from China, steel and chemical products from wherever the environmental regulations are lax. The big chance of Europe is to learn from the Swiss modell. but it hasn't much time. Only a few decades left...