But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc.

The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fine because they'll eventually die. For a government, you should strive for an environment that lets you keep growing wealth.

Cost of living is increasing in the US too (in large part due to geopolitical reasons), and social contributions are rising because of demographic factors. I'm not sure how market liberalism is magically going to fix that latter issue.

Re: demographics. It's relatively straightforward: To keep contributions constant while supporting more people, you need either:

-more people via immigration (which is extremely tricky to get right) who are net contributors, not beneficiaries of social systems -massively increased productivity through innovation/technology -cut benefits from social programs

If you do none of those things, the systems will either collapse or you need to raise taxes/mandatory contributions which are de-facto taxes.

It's not national law that can be bent locally, it's EU law that applies to all companies of certain size.

I think the EU learned the hard way that they can't rely on its members to prioritize common interests

(see Ireland vs. Apple tax avoidance, Germany vs. Car evolution, Austria vs. Reduction of Russian influence, Hungary vs. everything)