>one could easily claim that it is the most harsh regulator on the planet.

The argument that the EU is a more harsh regulator than Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, (or even on par with those regulatory regimes) entirely undermines the rest of your comment.

There's pretty well tested and highly respected indexes which fundamentally disagree. Of the 7 most economically free nations, three are in the EU, and a fourth is automatically party to the majority of the EU's economic regulations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ec...

In the Index of Economic Freedom, more than a dozen EU member nations outperform the United States with regards to Economic Freedoms.