The heterogeneity of European capitalisms seems to be one of the causes of the current crisis. Differences in terms of competitiveness and institutions are huge. With the crisis as point of departure I will analyse this heterogeneity. First, I describe the comparative (dis-)advantages of selected EU-member states. The differences are big, particularly in terms of econoic speci- alisation and innovation capacity. In the second part the paper concentrates on institutional development in the past decade. I distinguish ideal-typical from empirical, national capita- lisms, which are located and may change in the field between the types. Based on state-econo- my and capital-labour relationships as criteria my types are liberal and embedded capitalism of which the latter is split into statist, patrimonial an corporatist types. Data from the IEF, the OECD and the World Bank are rough indicators to locate the cases, but show that strongly corporatist capitalisms as those in the Nordic countries are highly competitive, while competi- tiveness declines the more, as in the Mediterranean countries, patrimonial capitalism is.