Any insight how this productivity on the graph is measured? Nominal GDP is, of course measured in a fraudulent unit. "Real" GDP is not much better either, because people cannot agree what the actual inflation, that you should adjust by, is. Besides, it's still measured in a fraudulent unit.
Either way, I'm not surprised. Germany is a pristine modern example of how socialism can turn around a perfectly good economy and run it into the ground. (Slightly older examples are all over the South America.)
And don't get me wrong, I think the EU (and ECSC before it) was successful in rebuilding a continent ravaged by war (and later to uplift some post-Soviet states) through a weird combo of free markets, free trade but also targetted welfare. It has succeeded on a scale that few international programs do, but it has since outlived its usefulness.
What matters is that the productivity measure is a similarly good proxy for true productivity over time. If so, then the trend change is likely real.
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