If a firm wants to launch a green field investment, it would have to wait 200 calendar days in Ireland before a new warehouse gets electricity; in Germany it would have to wait only 17 days.18 There are reasons to be optimistic about the effects of a reform process in the euro area.
Recent micro-level research from the Eurosystem’s Competitiveness Network, for instance, shows that there is a large and skewed distribution between the most and least productive firms in individual euro area countries.