Maybe the EU is doing better than ever on some metrics, but I find it quite scary how over the last 20 years, Europe has completely missed the train on technology. We are now in a vassal position where we have to beg foreign CEOs to have some sort of view / control over the technology that runs our society. And it's not getting any better.
GDPR is too little too late, and may even be counterproductive[1]. It would have been vastly preferable to have healthy European competitors to Microsoft / Apple / Google / Facebook. But we don't, and probably will never have.
The situation with Microsoft in the 90's should have made it obvious of what was to come. Our politicians ignored it entirely. They are now making grand statements about democracy that leave me less than impressed.
[1] Some say that GDPR will cement Google / Facebook's advertising monopoly as they are in a much better position to gather data sharing consent from their users than their smaller competitors.