When talking about the long-term future of EU businesses, which is not an easy task when all what seems to matter is the short-term, there is a tendency to highlight regulatory, economic and political issues. Among the recurrent themes are sluggish growth in developed countries and the rise of some emerging economies such as China and Brazil, the cost of energy and the status of the relationships with some of the main EU providers, and the never-addressed constraints to create a real EU single market.
Less attention is given to some of the social issues that could most significantly affect the future of EU business and that are probably more relevant than many of the economic, political and regulatory factors we have got used to hear about.
