| > To digitalise and decarbonise the economy and increase our defence capacity, [..] > If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a
leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will
not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions. At some point you need to make sacrifices, you can't have everything. The very nature of politics is to trade-off ideals. The EU has been far too used to getting its own way on everything. The joke is that the decarbonisation never really happened, it ended up being a "anywhere but here" policy. So all of the manufacturing prowess is lost, technology is greatly dependant on dictators wanting to destroy Europe and security sacrificed as a result. The irony is, the most energy efficient manufacturing method is not to ship materials multiple times around the planet, it's to create and manufacture close to home. Supermarkets know this best. > The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing
patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and
innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive
regulations. It is made as difficult as possible for companies to be innovative in Europe. Speaking on behalf of a UK company that wanted to trade with Europe, they made it so difficult we gave up. Now we trade in other markets and there is far less restrictions. > As a result, many European entrepreneurs prefer to seek financing from US venture capitalists and scale up in the
US market. Between 2008 and 2021, close to 30% of the “unicorns” founded in Europe – startups that went on the
be valued over USD 1 billion – relocated their headquarters abroad, with the vast majority moving to the US. In exactly this situation now. US venture capital is offering double with less strings. The rest of this is definitely a read for tonight. The problem is that in order to fix all of this they should have started 10 years ago. |