Neoliberalism crept into Europe wearing a sharp suit and talking about efficiency. It promised a leaner, meaner state, less red tape, more growth, and a brighter future. What it delivered was stagnant wages, crumbling services, and Jeff Bezos in a rocket. For Europe, the cost has been clear: growing inequality, weakened public institutions, and a sense that someone, somewhere, has sold the family silver—and is now renting it back to us with interest.
Contrary to pub-table conspiracy theories, none of this involved secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms. Neoliberalism was quite open about its intentions. As economist Richard D. Wolff points out, the goal was never shared prosperity—it was restoring profitability for those at the top after the post-war consensus began fraying. And Europe, always fond of a bit of Anglo-American fashion, imported the whole wardrobe.
Welcome to Europe Inc., a four-part series on how neoliberalism turned the European project into a corporate shareholder meeting. From inequality to militarism, corporate capture to resistance, this isn’t just a critique — it’s a guided tour through the ruins and a map to the exits. Steeped in dry wit, and entirely unaffiliated with any hedge fund.
Tax cuts and deregulation: champagne for some, flat lager for the rest
Let’s begin with the tax cuts. From Paris to Berlin, and London to Lisbon, tax policies since the 1980s have followed the same basic script: reduce top rates, deregulate markets, and tell the public it’ll all ‘trickle down’ eventually—like a broken toilet in a penthouse flat.
The UK slashed corporation tax from 52% in the early ’80s to just 19% by the late 2010s (with plans to tinker further). France dropped its wealth tax under Macron, hoping the rich would feel more “at home”. Spoiler: they felt richer. Across Europe, the average corporate tax rate fell from over 40% to around 21%—all while public services were being told to “tighten belts” so aggressively that some snapped.
Meanwhile, deregulation let financial firms play Monopoly with real economies. Iceland’s banks ballooned to ten times the size of its GDP, and when the crash came, the country was left holding the bill. In the UK, the City of London transformed into a semi-autonomous playground where regulation was politely asked to wait outside.
Wolff reminds us this wasn’t an economic accident—it was class warfare by PowerPoint. The rich didn’t just win; they got to write the rules and invoice the rest of us for the paper.
Austerity: your crisis, their opportunity
When the 2008 financial meltdown hit—a crisis caused by reckless lending, overleveraged banks, and the sort of risk management you’d expect at a student house party—governments across Europe sprang into action. They bailed out the banks and handed the invoice to everyone else.
Greece was the worst-hit. After accepting EU-IMF bailout terms, it was forced to privatise airports, slash pensions, and fire thousands of civil servants. One Greek hospital reportedly ran out of surgical gloves. But at least Lufthansa got some lovely new terminals.
In the UK, David Cameron and George Osborne ushered in a decade of austerity so severe it became the economic equivalent of self-flagellation. Council budgets were cut by over 60%, libraries closed in droves, and benefits were frozen or capped. But oddly, there was always enough money for a royal yacht or a failed ferry company run by, of all things, a pizza firm.
As Wolff puts it, austerity isn’t about saving money. It’s about shifting the burden from those who caused the crisis to those least able to resist it. In short: socialise the losses, privatise the pain.
Privatisation: now with extra inefficiency
One of neoliberalism’s greatest magic tricks is convincing people that privatisation is always more efficient. The reality? Services get worse, accountability vanishes, and prices go up—unless you’re a shareholder, in which case, congratulations.
Take Britain’s water system. Sold off under Thatcher, it’s now run by a patchwork of private firms who’ve managed to rack up enormous debt, underinvest in pipes, and regularly dump sewage into rivers. Quite the hat trick. And yet, they’ve still found billions for dividends.
Or look at rail. UK train fares are among the highest in Europe, despite punctuality levels that suggest the trains are powered by astrology. Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s state-owned railway, runs British services via its subsidiary Arriva—a perfect metaphor for how our privatised systems are quietly owned by other countries’ public sectors.
In Spain, regional health services have been partially outsourced to private operators with slick branding and not-so-slick care levels. Even Sweden, long held up as a social democratic utopia, saw educational outcomes dip after introducing private, for-profit school chains in the 1990s. Turns out, when your business model involves squeezing education into Excel, students tend to lose out.
Privatisation, as Wolff notes, doesn’t just change who owns a service—it changes what the service is for. It’s no longer about need; it’s about margin. You’re not a patient—you’re a revenue stream. Congratulations again.
This was the plan all along
There’s no need for cloak-and-dagger theories here. Neoliberalism wasn’t imposed by shadowy cabals—it was loudly championed by think tanks, lobby groups, and business leaders who published their intentions in glossy pamphlets with lots of graphs.
Institutions like the European Commission, the IMF, and the European Central Bank didn’t hide their goals. They called them “structural reforms” and delivered them with polite menace. When Greece’s elected government resisted, the ECB cut off its banking system until it complied. That’s not a conspiracy—that’s a press release.
Wolff is clear: neoliberalism is a class project. It’s the reassertion of elite economic control, disguised as “modernisation” and “market reform”. It’s not about making systems work better for everyone. It’s about ensuring they work predictably for capital—preferably without the messiness of democratic input.
Where next?
Inequality in Europe isn’t an unfortunate byproduct—it’s baked into the model. But there are signs of fatigue. Strikes have returned with force. Public ownership is no longer taboo. And younger generations, priced out of housing and saddled with debt, are considerably less enchanted by the gospel of free markets.
That said, don’t expect neoliberalism to vanish in a puff of logic. It’s resilient, shape-shifting, and well-armed with PR consultants. But as Wolff and others argue, change begins with naming the problem. Neoliberalism isn’t just bad policy—it’s a framework that protects wealth by extracting it from everything else.
If we want different outcomes—fairer, saner, more human ones—we’ll need a different framework entirely. And maybe, just maybe, a train that runs on time without bankrupting you.