%100 on that I completely agree, the way I see it is the eurozone has had a long time to use cheap energy and build an industry on it to exploit that energy to at the levels they do, apart from China and maybe India a bit none of the BRICS nations are really manufacturing/enriching energy and commodities on a massive scale, they'll need to bring that Euro enrichment into their zones and that takes time

I do think the EU zone is shrinking based on many policy reasons but like you say cheap energy is the tide that lifts or sinks all ships.

I've seen some protectionist policies rolling out recently like South African oranges require additional operational costs before shipping to the EU so its competitive with Spanish exports

What's your take on EU with these higher interest rates combined with energy inflation, surely things are breaking if no easing is coming in