> Europe does lag behind though for many different reasons. One big is that the single market of EU is on paper large but in practice it is a lot of different countries with very different cultures and languages.
This is the biggest one. The single market is not really "done", and all attempts to deepen it face enormous resistance by national electorates that is now at the point to vote against anything that comes out of the EU.
For example, in order to sell a product in the Netherlands you have to have a sticker in Dutch, even though >90% of population understands English. That's a tiny thing, but makes a supply chain that much more complex.
For digital services it's even worse, the laws still differ significantly per country. Where I work we want to expand, but we still have to do it per country...
This is the biggest one. The single market is not really "done", and all attempts to deepen it face enormous resistance by national electorates that is now at the point to vote against anything that comes out of the EU.
For example, in order to sell a product in the Netherlands you have to have a sticker in Dutch, even though >90% of population understands English. That's a tiny thing, but makes a supply chain that much more complex.
For digital services it's even worse, the laws still differ significantly per country. Where I work we want to expand, but we still have to do it per country...