In many ways, new technologies merely "enable" productivity gains. The more important issue is whether the technologies lead to the efficient reorganisation of workplace practices.If redundancy costs are high, companies will choose not to pursue investment that might, otherwise, make a significant contribution to faster economic growth (for a more detailed discussion of some of these issues, see Fifty Years of Economic Growth in Western Europe: No Longer Catching Up But Falling Behind? by Nicholas Crafts, siepr.stanford.edu/papers/pdf/03-21.pdf).Another way to put this is to argue that Europe's social market system is one brilliantly designed to cope with the rigours of economic "catch-up" - the growth that we saw in the Fifties and Sixties - but poorly designed to cope with the lottery aspects of new technologies and globalisation. University graduates may not always have the specialist skills but they may have a greater ability to "reinvent" themselves throughout their careers.Another reason lies with a lack of competitive pressure within Europe's distribution network, implying that the rapid decline in computer prices seen in the US has not been seen to the same degree on this side of the Atlantic.And then there's the high level of job protection, notably the costs of redundancy. Continental Europe's economic system, which worked so well in the Sixties, seems to have been ill-equipped to deal with this seismic change.

One reason for this may be continental Europe's historic reliance on vocational training rather than university education: equipping people with a specific set of skills which, later on, become redundant in the light of new technologies increases the risk of job loss and also, inevitably, makes people resistant to change. For the US and the UK, the equivalent figures are 1.9 per cent and 1.8 per cent respectively. Germany's performance still seems relatively good, although clearly the productivity data mask other weaknesses: GDP growth has been pathetic and I doubt that the 4 million unemployed workers are regularly dancing in the street. Overall, though, what these numbers show is that while productivity growth has slowed everywhere compared with the Sixties, the slowdown in Europe has been particularly acute.What's gone wrong? It's perhaps no accident that the recent relative outperformance of the US and the UK has coincided with the technology revolution. Productivity growth was way ahead of Europe's competitors: from 1950 through to 1973, during the Continent's so-called Golden Age, annual growth in GDP per hour worked averaged 6.0 per cent in Germany, 5.1 per cent in France and Italy, 4.4 per cent in the Netherlands ...

and just 3.0 per cent and 2.9 per cent in, respectively, the US and the UK.No longer, though, do people look on continental Europe as a region of economic success. Once a centre of dynamism, the Continent is now more a region of economic calcification. And Europe's populations know it: Sunday's French "non" may be, in part, an expression of frustration at this gradual descent into economic impotence.Of the reasons for the slowdown, some are easily understandable. Demographic trends are becoming less helpful as populations age and the dependent elderly rise in number relative to the working young.