Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the @TechBBQ Policy Stage! The event focused on important policy debates in Europe, particularly on how to support the growth of native startups and foster European innovation. Three big topics came up on nearly all panels: 1. Europe still depends heavily on US and Chinese technology to grow its most innovative companies, and recent geopolitical developments make this option increasingly unsafe. 2. While Europe is not bad at creating startups and funding them at early stages, those that do want to scale generally prefer to go abroad, meaning that Europe is effectively subsidizing its geopolitical rivals by exporting its human capital. 3. There are some success stories in Europe. Sweden came up repeatedly as a country with an above-average rate of success in scaling its startups. I was particularly interested in two ideas that came up regarding how to address the bottlenecks Europe faces. The first was how to channel pension funds into startups. Europe, and especially Denmark, has a large amount of pension capital that could be invested in its own growth instead of going abroad or into legacy companies. The second was the EU 28th regime. I was mesmerized during this specific panel when the panelists asked who thought it would properly address the scale-up problem Europe faces, and no one raised their hands. I also share this skepticism about the 28th regime, largely based on the argument made by Professor Luis Garicano (@lugaricano ) from the LSE. The current proposal still requires companies to comply with specific tax and labor regulations in all 27 EU countries. A true 28th regime would create a supranational company structure with specific rules that would be valid across all EU countries, generating healthy competition between national and EU legislation. If a country truly believes that its model is better, then it would attract more companies than the EU model, fostering a race to the top in terms of regulatory quality. While I did leave the event more knowledgeable, I did not leave more hopeful about Europe. My personal assessment, given how bureaucratic the EU is and how bitter political infighting has become (two topics that were raised by multiple panels, especially those featuring politicians) gives me little hope that the continent will address its bottlenecks and become the AI continent. I do not see any leader currently able to rise to the challenge of our time. My hope is that some group of countries, like the Nordics or the Baltics, will try to implement their own solutions, but on a smaller scale, maybe replicating the Swedish case. Hopefully, their success will inspire other countries to do the same.