The echoes from the 1970s and 1980s are becoming oppressive. Oil crises, fuel shortages, street blockades and protests, currency woes, paralysed governments, excessive taxes: to many observers, both within and beyond Europe, it must seem as if the old continent is once again locked in the grip of its old disease, eurosclerosis, which first struck a quarter of a century ago, just after the 1973 oil shock. Was all the promise of Europe's single market and its new currency, coupled with the oft talked-of spread of Thatcherite supply-side reforms across the continent, just an illusion?
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