The EU does have prohibitions on most aspects of state support of private enterprises, with a couple of notable exceptions, particularly the "cultural test". Th

The EU does have prohibitions on most aspects of state support of private enterprises, with a couple of notable exceptions, particularly the "cultural test". This has led to migration out of the EU for sectors which have tax breaks elsewhere (most visibly in techland this is videogames to Canada). Having lived on both sides of this I've concluded the EU model is the right one. The one real exception becomes when an aggressive external party tries to use state backed product dumping to displace all other existing market participants before jacking the price back up again. In those cases you will need punitive tariffs on imports, but that should be the exception and not the rule.