[volta83]

Its not completely unrelated.

Excess mortality is the only fact that we know for sure given that every country counts "COVID deaths" differently.

Given that there is a statistical difference, the only thing we can probably know for sure is that an individual chances were slightly better in the EU.

The difference is small, like others have mentioned, so it doesn't seem like EU policies did a lot for the whole EU.

This makes sense, since for example Germany had pretty harsh policies, but due some of its neighboring countries having pretty lax policies (e.g. Austria), some parts of Germany were extremely affected (e.g. Bavaria).

This hints that it doesn't really matter if single states have harsher policies as long as neighboring states do not, at least for states of the size of Germany.

If we look at China, which had a very cohesive policy in all its provinces, the story differs.

This hints that if cohesive policies would have been taken at EU and USA scale, the outcome might have been different.

That didn't happen, so we will never know for sure.

This doesn't answer the OP question, but if someone claims to have an answer, they are probably lying, because we don't really have facts to back that answer up.