A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of European Accelerationism (otherwise known as “eu/acc”).
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, the US has ruthlessly pursued its America First agenda — threatening to impose tariffs on rival nations, stripping back regulation and promising billions of dollars to build AI infrastructure across the country.
Scrambling for a response, European lawmakers have sought to sand down the edges of increasingly unpopular tech regulations: teasing tweaks to existing rules, ditching EU-wide directives and unveiling their own billion-euro pledges to support “AI champions”.
Cheering on from the sidelines, a handful of (disproportionately male) entrepreneurial elites has ramped up efforts to force a regulatory rowback on Europe.
From the extremely-online accelerationists to the libertarian MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) crowd, we broke down the pro-tech factions pushing the EU to roll back regulations and unleash homegrown AI.
EU Inc
This grassroots movement wants Brussels to take a cleaver to excessive rules and create the continent’s answer to a Delaware C corp — a new pan-European legal entity dubbed ‘EU Inc’ designed to make it easier to grow a globally significant businesses from Europe.
Berlin-based investors Andreas Klinger and Philipp Herkelmann are the leading ringmasters of this bunch. The pair launched EU Inc late last year, imploring officials to take reform seriously after years of complaints over the continent’s fragmented markets.
We need more voices […] to help open European politicians’ eyes.
EU Inc wants standardised investment processes to, for example, make it easier for a German angel investor to back their first Finnish startup without having to wrap their head around all the rules and regulations of Finland.
Other demands include a unified stock options programme to help more people benefit from a startup’s success; and digitising the business incorporation process — moving it online and making it faster than it is today.
“How we differentiate ourselves from the accelerationists and other groups like MEGA is we want to have a very actionable approach for Brussels. We want to move the needle,” says Herkelmann.
The MEGA set
Ready to answer Tesla mogul Elon Musk’s rallying cry to “Make Europe Great Again”, these guys dream of rolling out a DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) for Europe, torching every bit of bureaucracy in sight. But does it have the makings of a real political movement?
“Personally for me, this isn’t the right movement for Europe,” says Herkelmann of pro-growth industry group EU Inc. “I think we’re quite capable of coming up with our slogan.”
There’s a certain queasiness around MEGA — some tech workers argue it’s toxic — though it’s worth recalling how US tech leaders described Trump prior to his re-election.
French tech entrepreneur Andre Loesekrug-Pietri — seen last month donning a MEGA hat at the big AI summit in Paris — may be the movement’s frontman. He’s in New York this week and couldn’t resist a selfie outside Trump Tower.
“MEGA’s going to be very big,” says Loesekrug-Pietri, who is chairman of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative, which runs so-called moonshot research competitions. He declined to elaborate further.
The Vanguard
The intellectual bulwark of the pro-Europe platoon — if social media is a dinner party, these are the guests furrowing their brows amid high-minded conversation.
The accelerationists’ more po-faced cousins, these are typically techies with a track record of building their own startups, seeing their own pioneering work as fingertips on the long arm of history.
Instead of slowing down, you should make sure you’re the leader.
Like the EU Inc lot, they are patriotic when it comes to Europe and not averse to regaling social media followers with long threads on what makes this or that European company or founder great.
From the Visionaries Club’s A-lister event in Paris a few weeks back to serial founder Christian Reber’s European Builders Summit, a vanguard affair has the whiff of velvet-rope invite list that gets serious-minded techies excited.
Accelerationists
These guys splinter into many subgroups but their shared belief is that AI and other frontier tech should be allowed to move as fast as possible. This gung-ho camp — seen by some as tipsy on Silicon Valley mythology — claims many followers across Europe.
“By leading the development of a very powerful technology, you have the most influence over how it’s used,” says Benoit Vandevivere of pro-growth organisation eu/acc. “Instead of slowing down — which is not credible because it will speed up everywhere else — you should make sure you’re the leader.”
Asked about the other factions pushing tech’s interests on the continent, Vandevivere says: “We all have brothers, sisters, even parents who we don’t agree with 100% of the time […] We need more voices who speak the truth in a constructive manner to help open European politicians’ eyes.”
Known for their activism on social media platforms LinkedIn and X , they enjoy some offline antics too.
At a recent in-person meet-up of Irish activists by the name of Éire Accelerationism, leader Oisín Moran discussed plans to run historical tours around Ireland, promising “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory vibes.”
Suggesting a visit to an energy facility down the road, he said: “We’re so detached from how we survive as a species. A lot of people talk about, ‘Oh why would you go to Mars? It’s so inhospitable.’
“And yes it is inhospitable but in a really evident way,” he said. “Whereas, in our day-to-day lives, we are really held up by systems we don’t understand at all.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/mega-eu-acc-inc-accelerationist/
