Data on IT spending and investment unambiguously show that the European Union as a whole has eventually caught up with the United States in recent years. Throughout 1992-2001, two thirds of the EU population reached - or came much closer to - the same levels of IT diffusion as the United States. The remaining thirdof the EU citizens clusters together in a group of ´slow IT adopters´ (inclusive of Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece), whose distance from the US and the other EU countries in IT diffusion has evenwidened over time. In spite of this (partial) catching-up in IT diffusion, information technologies have so far delivered limited overall productivity gains in Europe. Thinking of European economies as new economies is thus not appropriate yet.