Must Europe choose between “strategic autonomy” and August off?

E uropeans and Americans concur: there is something fishy about a two-week summer holiday. But the rationale for their concerns is markedly different. To Wall Street and Silicon Valley types, indulging in an uninterrupted fortnight of vacation—a whole fortnight!—means essentially throwing in the towel. Imagine what opportunities for promotion will be forsaken by bunking off for 14 straight days. To office toilers in Stockholm, Rome or Paris, two weeks of leave seems equally suspect. Seulement two weeks? That would be acceptable only as the opening act of a proper summer break. Ideally this should stretch to a whole month. How else to recover from the existential drudgery of work? American out-of-office emails beseech the sender to wait a few hours while the holidaying recipient snaps