It's not "Europe", it's parts of it. France is particularly bad I hear, supposedly paralysed by unions. In the UK things are much better because unions lost a lot of their power in the 80s under Thatcher.
FWIW, France has a lower proportion of unionized workforce than the US, and a lot lower than the UK in the public sector. It's more about cultural differences than any single thing like unions.
Oh, I didn't know that. I've just heard bad things about it.
Although I might be confusing this with the government business laws in France, which are also a bit messy. There's a reason lots of French companies have exactly 49 employees.
I found it amusing that, when in college, the only people who objected to the on-campus bar's pool table usage scheme - "winner stays, loser pays" - in the whole four years I was there, were French :)
