One improbable figure looms over the European tech scene: Donald Trump. Pretty much every conversation I’ve had this year with a European founder or investor has begun with talk about the latest bombshell news out of Washington. Here are two of the punchiest takes I’ve heard:
- Trump is like a distributed denial of service attack on the human will (h/t ex-Googler philosopher James Williams for first coming up with that analogy). The US president bombards the public with so many announcements that he overwhelms democracy’s operating system.
- Trump will reverse the Marxist dictum that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The accidental chaos of Trump 1.0 will be followed by a far more sinister turn of events under Trump 2.0.
No doubt we could spend the next 4 years in Europe obsessing about every Trumpian move and suffer our own DDOS attack. But it would be more productive to focus on fixing Europe’s problems and get on with building businesses. And here some of Trump’s criticisms of Europe are painfully on point.
First, the US president is right that Europe is over-regulated. Much of this can be explained by the fragmentation of the 27-nation EU market — made worse by Brexit — and the tensions that arise between national and European law. Thankfully, the EU commission appears to have got that memo and is intent on deepening the single market.
Europe is bursting with entrepreneurial energy. But these startups need funding to scale.
In a dense 27-page document (ahem), it promised an unprecedented simplification of regulations to improve competitiveness. It also proposed the creation of a 28th regime to simplify the rules for startups across Europe. (Thanks to our friends at EU Inc for that one). As ever, fine words need to be turned quickly into decisive action.
Trump is also correct to say that Europe will not be taken seriously in technology until it develops its own globally relevant tech industry. As we write about at Sifted every day, Europe is bursting with entrepreneurial energy. But these startups need funding to scale. One of the most depressing data points in Atomico’s State of European Tech report was that European pension funds currently devote less than 0.01% of their €9.6tn of assets to venture capital. The Tibi initiative in France to mobilise institutional funds for growth capital is showing how it can be done.
Third, Trump is right that Europe has taken a holiday from history and should rearm. In the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, defence spending has remained woefully low in many European countries. Europe can no longer depend on the US to underpin Nato. Just as the threat of the Soviet Union drove greater European cohesion so a revanchist Russia — and a more disengaged US — might do the same. The emergence of the Munich-based battlefield software company Helsing has shown how defence tech is being reinvented. Despite a rocky start, the €1bn Nato Innovation Fund can help prime the investment pump.
All eyes will be on Paris this week as Emmanuel Macron hosts the AI Action Summit. Much of the media coverage will inevitably focus on the geotechnological rivalry between the US and China (especially with US vice president JD Vance in town). But a group of civil society leaders I heard last week rightly urged a reframing of the AI debate. We should not be talking about the AI arms race to achieve superintelligence so much as the race to build trustworthy and responsible services and products that ordinary people use. It’s time to build (in a European way).
As Northzone’s PJ Pärson recently put it in a LinkedIn post: “Let’s straighten our backs and be proud of being European and continue to build for sustainable growth.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/donald-trump-europe-eu-opinion-tech-investment-regulation/
