EU - open for business?

LinkedIn blog post, 03/06/2025, by Sven Franck (en français , in Deutsch)

TL;DR - I recently watched a US discussion on Trumps tariff roller coaster and the phrase that stuck with me was the US has the ideas 💡, China the manufacturing 🏭 and Europe... they can only regulate 📐.

True or not, this seems to be what you get with a European Commission staying mute (or being muted) on geopolitics and instead layering its own bureaucratic gusto on top of the existing 27 instead of unifying or integrating them.

Regulation per se must not be bad. If there is a purpose behind it. Literature says, EU citizens benefit from better and cheaper products compared to the US because of supranational regulation. However, I would argue that once you reach a certain level, the marginal return of almost anything is negative - as in have your innovative spirits wiped out by too much regulation. The EU seems clearly in negative territory with its principle business model being perceived to be "regulation" and considering its panicky omnibus attempts to cater to specific interest groups by removing sound regulations...

The question is whether the Commission has a business model or at least a vision? Anything beyond 🚀 "Boldly administering the status quo". After all, regulation should only be a means to an end. What is Europe's ? Considering that multiple domains today are too critical to just free-ride and purchase foreign tech, the EU suddenly finds itself having to develop stuff. Not unlike the US... but we should come up with something more intelligent than wielding tariffs. Our proper end to justify our regulatory means.

History can teach us a lesson: remember VHS and Video2000? The better but proprietary Video2000 format lost against the less sophisticated but openly available VHS format which anyone could build upon. In a lot of domains, the EU will likely start from a VHSsy position, so... why not impose openness? Imagine full portability of MS Office formats into other applications, all social media platforms having to provide APIs based on activity pub to pull and post content, open source and open hardware if you want to sell me your F35 fighter jets and anything else which could be bricked or cripple our infrastructure - China required joint-ventures and technology transfer to open a subsidiary. Europe could require and regulate for openness to do business. Wishful thinking, because sadly we seem to not have any end in mind. For a happy end, #jumpstartEU.