European Commission: Make Europe Great Again for Startups
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The European Commission (EC) has kicked off a scheme to make Europe a better place to nurture global technology businesses, providing support throughout their lifecycle, from startup through to maturity.
Launched this week, the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy [PDF], dubbed "Choose Europe to Start and Scale," is another attempt to cultivate a flourishing tech sector in the region to rival that of the US, or "make Europe a startup powerhouse," as the EC puts it.
At the moment, many European tech startups struggle to take their ideas from lab to market, or grow into major players in their market, the EC says, which proposes action across five main areas.
These include creating a more innovation-friendly environment with fewer administrative burdens across the EU Single Market; a Scaleup Europe Fund to help bridge the financing gap; a Lab to Unicorn initiative to help connect universities across the EU; attracting/retaining top talent through to advice on employee stock options and cross-border employment; as well as facilitating access to infrastructure for startups.
The EC reportedly plans to create a public-private fund of at least 10 billion ($11.3 billion) to help with financing. We asked the Commission for confirmation of this, but did not receive an answer prior to publishing.
[...] This latest initiative sets out a clear vision, the EC says: to make Europe the top choice to launch and grow global technology-driven companies. It initiates a myriad of actions to improve conditions for startups and scaleups, encouraging them to capitalize on new geopolitical opportunities, and - importantly - aims to reduce the reasons for fledgling businesses to relocate outside the EU.
[...] According to some estimates, Europeans pay on average a $100 monthly "tax" to use US-created technology, and Steve Brazier, former CEO at Canalys told us last year he suspects this will be exacerbated when AI is widely used.
Europe has relatively few major tech organizations compared to the US, and there is more and more interest from some European businesses in the Trump 2.0 era to reduce their reliance on American hyperscalers in favor of local cloud operators.
According to some seasoned market watchers, the boat has likely sailed with respect to loosening the dominance of Microsoft, AWS and Google in the cloud, yet for the emerging tech startup scene there may be everything to play for.
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