Falling EU fertility, an ageing workforce and cautious regulation threaten Europe's competitiveness; policymakers must balance family policy, skilled immigration and AI-led automation to sustain prosperity.

Our children both live and work in Amsterdam, and so we have spent a fair amount of time there over the past five years or so. It is a truly fabulous place - the polity thrives without the nastiness and dysfunction we see almost everywhere else.

The responsibilities of both governing and being a good citizen are taken seriously - we always arrive and leave feeling warmly towards the country, weather notwithstanding.

This extends to much of the rest of the continent. Europe has spent the better part of 70 years constructing what many would regard as the most successful social experiment in modern history. It built societies that are mostly peaceful, prosperous, liberal and remarkably humane, notwithstanding occasional spikiness.

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Universal healthcare became an expectation rather than an aspiration. Higher education expanded. Workers acquired protections that their grandparents could scarcely have imagined. Cities became cleaner, safer and easier to live in. Even today, when democratic institutions appear to be under pressure across much of the developed world, Europe (especially Northern Europe) continues to dominate almost every international ranking of governance, transparency, civil liberties and quality of life.

If one were asked to design an advanced society from scratch, there is...