When responding to these expectations, the EU and EMU face however two challenges: •  The first has to do with subsidiarity: it should be made clearer where the EU has an advantage over Member States in terms of exercising competence and where not. A better demarcation of competences between the European and national level is desirable – but not easy.
One broad measure of business-sector productivity has risen only 1-1/4 percent per year over the past 10 years in the United States and only 1/2 percent, on average, over the past 5 years. By contrast, over the 30 years from 1976 to 2005, productivity rose a bit more than 2 percent per year.