https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)
I think Europe was progressing quite nicely postwar until about 2000. The commies had been driven out, and standards of living were rising everywhere. With the US pulling out of its mediating role, the rise of the Euro and EU bureaucracy and centralized power, Euro-boosting propaganda preaching that leisure could replace work, plus German ambitions to use national economic and political power to crush industry elsewhere in the EU, things started to turn in my view. I think the potential of a single currency was buried under those factors. EASA is pretty much a microcosm of everything negative.
My wife the lovely Bavarian mostly agrees although she maintains that its really better for everybody if they use 100% German products, including Dornfelder Red with dinner.
