I don't think GDPR is the problem that makes science and technology succeed more elsewhere or fail more in the EU. There are far, far bigger problems, that are at play here. For starters we have a war still ongoing in the east. Economic power houses have had utterly corrupt governments for decades. Standardization of many things is difficult with so many separate nations. Education systems are questionable. All of these will play a larger role than GDPR.
Indeed, and I'm not blaming GDPR for all of the EU's problems, or even blaming it for anything specifically. I was entertaining a plausible rationale for a particular case and using this as an occasion to pose a more general question about the EU's effectiveness in balancing various concerns when regulating.
