I don't think that such a clear-cut distinction based on motivation or general intent can be made. There are political factions in the US whose goals are quite

I don't think that such a clear-cut distinction based on motivation or general intent can be made. There are political factions in the US whose goals are quite similar to those of more left-leaning factions in the EU. In general, you could probably say that the EU is more left-leaning than the US because two of its major powers - France and Germany - tend to be more left-leaning as well as Scandinavian countries, which from a US perspective are sometimes considered almost socialist (though that's not exactly true). While more left-leaning factions in general seem to favour the rights of the average citizen over those of corporations this isn't unanimously good or a clear distinction either. In some ways, the EU is a good example of the road to hell that's paved with good intentions. Its regulations often are so complex that - intentionally or not - they favour big corporations because they're too difficult to implement for smaller companies. Being an entrepreneur for instance is - very broadly speaking - more difficult and unusual than in the US, simply because employment in a big corporation pretty much is the assumed default model in the EU. Anything that deviates from that is more difficult to accommodate in the existing legal framework.