In the global race for technological dominance, Europe is increasingly falling behind. While the US and China are surging ahead, building digital empires based on artificial intelligence, advanced cloud and innovation, the Old Continent is facing a growing investment gap.
The latest analyses leave no illusions – we stand at a crossroads. If we do not take immediate and bold action, we risk losing our digital sovereignty and becoming permanently dependent on technologies designed and controlled outside our borders. This is no longer a question of prestige, but of strategic security and future prosperity.
Brutal reality in numbers
To understand the scale of the challenge, one only needs to look at hard data. Between 2019 and 2024, annual venture capital (VC) investment in the European Union averaged $68 billion.
This is an amount that may seem impressive in itself, but pales in comparison to the competition. During the same period, Asia invested $110 billion in its technological gems, while the Americas, driven by Silicon Valley, invested as much as $221 billion. This financial gap is a major brake on the development of European unicorns.
The problem does not end with money. Equally worrying is the innovation gap, which is perfectly illustrated by the number of patents filed. In the key high-tech sector, China has filed as many as 7.6 times more patents than the whole of Europe put together. This proves that the gap between us and global leaders is growing at an alarming rate, and is underpinned by a lack of capital to develop and commercialise breakthrough ideas.
Europe’s untapped potential
Despite these alarming signs, Europe is not a technological desert. We are still a powerhouse in many specialised and vitally important niches. Our companies are at the forefront of industrial automation, robotics or power semiconductors, components crucial to the energy transition and electromobility. Our engineering and scientific potential is unquestionable.
So what if we lack the fuel for growth? The diagnosis is simple and painful. European startups lack capital at the crucial stage of scaling – the transition from a promising project to a global player. This is when they are most often acquired by American or Asian giants or simply fail to withstand the competition. The second brake is the lack of a bold political vision and effective regional cooperation. Instead of creating a unified, powerful market, we are still struggling with fragmentation, which makes it difficult to build companies of a scale comparable to Google, Tencent or Amazon.
The stakes are higher than we think
Why is this technological impotence so dangerous? Because the high-tech sector long ago ceased to be just one of many industries. Today, it generates 8% of global GDP, and its impact on industry, services, medicine and our daily lives is absolutely fundamental. Generative AI, smartphones or software-driven vehicles are the defining technologies of today.
Analysts warn that 2025 will be a defining moment for Europe. It is the last bell to take up the fight for a digital future. Passivity will mean progressive dependence on foreign platforms, algorithms and infrastructure. At stake is not only our economic competitiveness, but also our ability to shape the social and ethical framework of technological development ourselves.
The rescue plan: How can Europe catch up?
Fortunately, the dependency scenario is not yet a foregone conclusion. There is a concrete roadmap that can reverse this negative trend. The key is to create a coherent, resilient and sovereign technology ecosystem that leverages our strengths.
Firstly, we need to radically increase investment and open up to the best talent from around the world through a smart migration policy. Second, we need pan-European initiatives along the lines of the Airbus project to consolidate resources and knowledge in strategic areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computers or semiconductor manufacturing. Thirdly, a leap in R&D spending is needed to catch up with the US and China. Finally, we need to rebuild local manufacturing capacity to become independent of fragile global supply chains.
Europe faces a historic choice. We can remain a passive consumer of other people’s innovations or we can take the future into our own hands. The potential is still here, but the window of opportunity is closing very quickly. The time for bold decisions is now.
