When any audience in Europe is asked whether \u2013 under identical conditions of profitability and available skills \u2013 they would make an investment in the United States or in Europe, over 90 percent regularly raise their hand in favor of the United States.<\/p>\n
We Europeans are the first not to have confidence in our innovation system. Because we know well that in Europe the risk is greater and the probability of success lower.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the Draghi report emphasized that European tech companies are few and small, university research is good but not oriented toward development, major European tech projects \u2013 semiconductors, satellite constellations, cloud, weapons systems, fintech solutions, AI models and quantum computing \u2013 are fragmented, overlapping and undercapitalized. And our unicorns are mostly in sectors with medium-low rates of technological innovation.<\/p>\n
We are now in 2026 and it has become even more evident that we Europeans can no longer depend on American or Chinese scientific and technological progress without ending up submitting our laws and our markets to the political and economic will of other powers.<\/p>\n
Thus, public investments are invoked, greater funds for research, a capital markets union and tax incentives for those who finance innovation. However, in the meantime we continue to finance small, fragmented and overlapping national projects and champions. And to maintain a defeatist approach that combines “spray and pray” and “too little, too late” policies into “distribute little, late, and hope.” A relaunch policy for a defeatist Europe that does not want to recognize what tech innovation really needs: improving opportunities for success for our entrepreneurs; strengthening the financing of small, medium and large innovative companies; favoring the growth in size of successful ones.<\/p>\n
The first necessary initiative to change the minds of Europeans who would not invest in Europe today is to allow those who launch an innovative project in Europe to have the same probabilities of success and risks they would have in America or China. We can be the most attractive economic bloc for innovation if we give young entrepreneurs identical conditions of access to 450 million Europeans and 33 million European companies. But we are resigned to being 27 different markets and many think we have missed the train forever.<\/p>\n
Both the Draghi report on competitiveness and the Letta report on the single market have instead called for the creation of a 28th regime \u2013 identical throughout Europe \u2013 for innovative companies. The Commission is launching it, but limited to a European digital identity and registration, and to generic “aspirations” of regulatory alignment. Entrepreneurs and investors specifically request unified taxation, labor regulations that provide hiring flexibility, simplified administrative management. Despite verbal support from German and French leadership (and the silence of the Italian government…) no member state so far has the “political” courage to fully embrace the idea of allowing small but valuable companies to work in a truly unified European framework.<\/p>\n
Yet this is what our young entrepreneurs ask of us. A single simplified employment contract is enough, a unified tax regime for the first years, a simple and freer corporate legal form, the prevalence of the administrative regulations of the country of incorporation. Even without unanimity, the main European governments can coordinate with some member states on the new regime restricted to European companies below a certain size, for 10-12 years from incorporation. The political message would be one of confidence for young people and optimism for savers\/investors, difficult to oppose in the name of sovereignty. Forty years ago, the most forward-thinking universities began, amid the skepticism and resistance of academic conservatives, to exchange students without a complete European framework. Today Erasmus serves almost 20 million European students. A 28th regime, “the Erasmus of innovation,” would be a powerful signal of cohesion among us Europeans at a time when we are under attack and considered incapable of modernizing ourselves. Let’s prove the opposite.<\/p>\n
Secondly, there is often talk of capital necessary for innovation, invoking tax exemptions for private individuals and public contributions. And as advocated by many, a European “platform” to mobilize private savings. Many member states have already adopted tax facilities, excellent for supporting startups and encouraging “seed capital.” However, it is necessary to think more about supporting the growth of European companies from a few tens to billions in revenue. And accept that major technological challenges require billions with very high risk profiles, sustainable only by giant companies (only one European among the top twenty in the world…) or directly by states (the largest European is less than a quarter of the United States and 6-7 percent of China).<\/p>\n
The European Commission is indeed launching a Scale-up Fund, which optimistically will invest only 5 or 6 billion over 6 or 7 years. The entire Fund would therefore barely cover a single financing in AI, space or high performance computing. We must have more courage.<\/p>\n
The European Union must equip itself with more powerful instruments for joint investment in strategic initiatives for our autonomy and defense, with very long-term horizons such as quantum computing, space constellations and supercomputing capabilities.<\/p>\n
What to do then? We need to act in three directions.<\/p>\n
To strengthen European private investment capacity, it is necessary to launch a European investment instrument that can strengthen funds dedicated to the growth of tech companies. Today only 2 of the top 20 major global funds are based in the EU, 4 in wider Europe. For medium-sized investments, European national promotional institutions \u2013 such as CDP, KfW and Bpifrance in Italy, Germany and France \u2013 must expand their mission to co-investment in European “scale-ups” with international and global potential even outside their countries. Finally, for substantial and higher-risk investments, the EIB must be equipped with an equity investment division for projects of European strategic interest indicated in the Commission’s competitiveness strategy and approved by the Council, also a recommendation of the Draghi report only semi-launched in 2025.<\/p>\n
Certainly, these changes would require new personnel and fresh technical and managerial skills, but precisely these would strengthen our public and private investment system for the long term. However, there is hesitation to embrace them and translate them into bold proposals, perhaps due to implications for governance and ownership of funds, perhaps also due to the defeatist fatalism of those who say “it’s too late anyway.”<\/p>\n
Finally, we need to actively encourage the dimensional growth of European companies, both private and public. In the public sector, the “Airbus model” is always cited but governments seem fearful and victims of resistance to mergers between their national companies in defense, space, electronics. The private world would instead be more inclined to try, but Brussels’ competition policy management has discouraged for twenty years those who wanted to consolidate in Europe, to protect consumers and client companies “ex ante.” Precisely when technology was changing and making scale and concentration essential to sustain innovation and investment. Although in 2025 President von der Leyen declared she wanted to adopt a different approach, more open to concentration in strategic sectors, to date competition policies have not undergone significant, clear and rapidly implementable revisions that could accelerate consolidations. We cannot take years; we need a new competition policy by 2026.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, Europe can and must be optimistic, have more courage.<\/p>\n
Demonstrate a more united continent \u2013 looking first and foremost to young innovators \u2013 and willing to extend the model by moving forward. Allocate substantial capital in favor of the European innovation system, trusting that we will know how to protect public funds and mobilized private savings. And push the union of industrial forces and the excellence of individual European countries, to better face competition from the two American and Chinese poles. And courage and optimism are especially needed to fuel the confidence of European citizens. To show them that continental innovation capabilities imply not only greater competitiveness but above all greater job opportunities for our young people.<\/p>\n
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