Europe has many globally successful technology companies. ASML and Siemens, The Pirate Bay and Spotify, SAP and Accenture. It also seems Swedish Match has managed to "innovate" quite well on cigarettes by introducing tobacco free nicotine pouches to the US, which I'd expect to be a continuing financial success story over the coming years.

Infringing on people's data protection rights isn't a precondition to product development and innovation, that's just a weak justification of tyranny.