I don't think the issue is the lack of good leadership.
Europe, and particularly the EU, is effectively governed by people who think like administrators. In politics, in business, and in the actual administration. On some level, this is a good thing. The core republican principle is that leaders should be disposable servants, because actual leaders never have the public's best interests in mind. Except maybe temporarily or by accident.
The problem is that administrators tend to propose administrative solutions to the issues they have identified. Because they think like administrators. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. Most successes and failures of the EU can be traced back to this tendency to enact administrative solutions. There would be more successes and fewer failures if the administrators could somehow learn to predict when an administrative solution is not the right tool.
Housing markets, labor markets, and pension systems are regional, and the situation in each region is different. Capital markets are also regional to some extent, but perhaps they shouldn't be. Pay is a matter of perspective. You can say that Europeans lack well-paying jobs, or you can say that American middle class wages are low (relative to the wealth of the society), because their upper middle class wages are high.
Europe, and particularly the EU, is effectively governed by people who think like administrators. In politics, in business, and in the actual administration. On some level, this is a good thing. The core republican principle is that leaders should be disposable servants, because actual leaders never have the public's best interests in mind. Except maybe temporarily or by accident.
The problem is that administrators tend to propose administrative solutions to the issues they have identified. Because they think like administrators. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. Most successes and failures of the EU can be traced back to this tendency to enact administrative solutions. There would be more successes and fewer failures if the administrators could somehow learn to predict when an administrative solution is not the right tool.
Housing markets, labor markets, and pension systems are regional, and the situation in each region is different. Capital markets are also regional to some extent, but perhaps they shouldn't be. Pay is a matter of perspective. You can say that Europeans lack well-paying jobs, or you can say that American middle class wages are low (relative to the wealth of the society), because their upper middle class wages are high.