Austria and Bavaria share more than just south-German Catholicism and Alpine scenery: in the course of recent decades both have been transformed into high-wage service economies dependent on technology rather than labour, outstripping in productivity and prosperity the older industrial regions further north. Like Catalonia, Italy’s Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, France’s Rhône-Alpes region and the Île-de-France, Southern Germany and Austria—together with Switzerland, Luxembourg and parts of Belgian Flanders—constitute a common zone of European economic privilege.
