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On October 3, 2025, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a sweeping docket astatine Italian Tech Week: a “28th regime” for startups, an “AI First” strategy, and a Savings and Investment Union to unlock Europe’s €1.4 trillion successful household savings.
Then came inflated numbers. Von der Leyen claimed Europe present has 4 supercomputers successful the planetary top 10. It has two. She stated lone 24% of European household wealth is invested successful equity versus 42% successful the US. The existent fig is 35.9%. When achievements get doubled and gaps get tripled, communicative precedes evidence.
The Savings and Investment Union promises “deep superior markets” but ignores structural failures. American startups database connected unified exchanges – the NASDAQ oregon NYSE. Europeans look Euronext, Deutsche Börse, and the London Stock Exchange. Von der Leyen proposes nary unification, preferring to propulsion retail investors into high-risk venture superior alternatively than creating liquid nationalist marketplace infrastructure.
The disparity is stark: EU venture superior will scope $12.17 cardinal successful 2025; the US: $171.3 billion. Even successful European startups often database successful New York, returning superior done American infrastructure.
The “28th regime” – a uniform regulatory model alongside 27 nationalist systems – has merit. But American companies already navigate European fragmentation successfully. The existent barriers prevarication deeper: hazard culture, diligent capital, talent retention.
What made Silicon Valley successful was mission-driven national concern creating markets. European startups struggle due to the fact that Europe doesn’t acceptable tangible missions. Horizon 2020 distributed €80 billion; the Human Brain Project consumed €600 cardinal – producing papers but nary transformative breakthroughs.
The “AI First” strategy lacks a coherent approach. Billions travel toward infrastructure with nary penchant for transparent, unfastened models implicit proprietary achromatic boxes. Open-source models align with European values – antiauthoritarian accountability, bias verification, strategic autonomy – yet person nary priority.
The strategy’s glaring omission: workers whose jobs AI will eliminate. France raised the status property to 64, Germany contemplates 67. Governments mandate longer work while championing technologies rendering those years redundant. No labour transition model exists.
Europe claims clime enactment while proposing resource-intensive infrastructure. Training 1 ample connection exemplary consumes arsenic overmuch vigor arsenic hundreds of homes annually. Self-driving cars perpetuate αυτοκίνητο dependency when resources could money nationalist transit and high-speed rail.
Europe succeeded earlier differently. Airbus challenged Boeing done patient, mission-driven investment. CERN’s World Wide Web came from publically funded research. These shared wide missions, diligent capital, and prioritized strategic autonomy – elements absent now.
How is this translated into Greece’s context?
Greece loses talented graduates while struggling to standard startups. Yet it possesses unique advantages: world-class probe institutions similar NCSR Demokritos, strong technical universities, diaspora networks, and strategic positioning astatine Europe’s vigor and integer crossroads.
Rather than awaiting Brussels’ fragmented programs, Greece could pioneer mission-driven innovation nationally:
Mediterranean vigor hub: Become the renewable vigor gateway betwixt Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East by 2035, creating request for precocious vigor storage, smart grid technologies, and greenish hydrogen accumulation – pulling Greek startups into existent markets with authorities arsenic anchor customer.
Climate resilience and wildfire prevention: Greece’s devastating wildfire seasons request achieving zero wildfire-related deaths and an 80% simplification successful burned country by 2030. This requires integrated systems combining outer monitoring, AI-powered aboriginal detection, autonomous aerial firefighting drones, and predictive occurrence behaviour modeling. Greek startups could pioneer distant sensing, real-time hazard assessment, coordinated robotic response, and wood absorption optimization. The ngo extends to clime adaptation: drought-resistant agriculture, water management, and ecosystem restoration. Government procurement creates contiguous markets while positioning Greece arsenic a Mediterranean person successful clime resilience – solutions desperately needed crossed Southern Europe, California, Australia, and different fire-prone regions globally.
Digital wellness leadership: Leverage aging colonisation challenges by ensuring each Greek implicit 65 receives AI-assisted preventive healthcare by 2032, demanding transparent aesculapian AI, distant monitoring, and integrated wellness platforms – creating testbeds for solutions exportable crossed aging Europe.
Defense technology autonomy: Greece’s geopolitical presumption creates accidental for indigenous defence innovation: autonomous naval systems for Aegean patrol, integrated aerial defence networks, swarm drone technologies for borderline monitoring, and cybersecurity platforms. Defense procurement represents diligent superior with guaranteed request – the Hellenic Armed Forces arsenic anchor customer. This generates monolithic civilian spillovers successful AI, robotics, sensors, and unafraid communications while gathering strategic autonomy. Israel demonstrates however smaller nations facing information imperatives physique world-class technology sectors exporting globally.
These missions necessitate organization reform. Universities indispensable commercialize probe done reformed IP frameworks. Public procurement indispensable prioritize home innovation implicit lowest-bid overseas solutions. Patient superior mechanisms – not diffuse subsidies – indispensable support companies done maturation stages.
Most critically, Greece indispensable clasp talent by offering meaningful challenges. Young engineers permission not conscionable for higher salaries but for ambitious projects. Mission-driven innovation successful clime resilience, defense, energy, maritime and wellness offers work that matters, backed by diligent capital, solving problems Greeks understand deeply.
Europe’s failures supply Greece’s opportunity. While Brussels optimizes superior flows without wide purpose, Greece could show that smaller nations with focused missions and organization coordination tin physique innovation ecosystems generating broadly shared prosperity. The alternate is simply a continued encephalon drain and dependence connected solutions designed elsewhere for problems Greeks could solve themselves.
Xenophon Krokidis is the laminitis and CEO Scienomics, a materials find company.
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