EU has done really well on passing big laws such as GDPR in the recent years, while the US can’t even seem to decide whether to fund their own government. Why do you think Europe is doing better than the US? One would think that since EU is more diverse it would be harder to find common ground. And there were examples of that during the Greece debt crisis. But not anymore, it seems.
EU is more defensive and protectionist because our companies are a lot smaller due to a more fragmented internal market, more regulation, and getting damaged/destroyed in WW2. Notice that this all hits big tech and that the EU has nothing similar on this front. I don’t think the EU capital owners would push for this otherwise and that is basically all the EU listens to. A nice side effect is that it usually is actually good regulation to protect their citizens.