If you want to measure all economic activity than one has to include also illegal activity. Whether any activity - legal or not - has any "value" in a non-economic sense is a different question. GDP can certainly be criticized. But it seems you point was mainly that industrial production went to down in Europa since 2007, but I can also not see this.

The main issues Europa has are dependency on Energy imports, an unhealthy but fixable dependency on US IT tech, an ongoing war with Russia, and an aging population. Renewables are are really good idea, immigration would also help a lot, but is politically difficult.