27/05/2026
The most dangerous idea in Europe today is that we must become more American to survive. Over the past year, governments across the continent have been quietly scrapping rules protecting our data, our environment, and our rights as consumers – telling us this is the price of competitiveness. Right-, centre-, and even left-wing politicians agree.
But what if the premise is wrong?
In a new op-ed published in The Guardian, our founder Professor Alberto Alemanno uses a deceptively simple object – the plastic bottle cap now tethered to your bottle by EU law – as a parable for a much bigger fight. Who gets to set the rules governing Europe’s economy? And who benefits when those rules disappear?
Alemanno challenges two assumptions driving the deregulation push in Brussels: that Europe is in economic decline, and that regulation is to blame. Neither, he argues, holds up to scrutiny. What the simplification agenda does deliver, however, is precisely what Washington has been demanding as the price of any trade deal – a continent less able to protect its people and shape global markets on its own terms.
Europe doesn’t need to abandon its model to succeed. It needs to complete it.
Read the full piece in The Guardian