Patrick Collison and Mario Draghi just launched the Rhine Group to reverse Europe’s decline 😳 Their move is one of the most ambitious elite interventions in European tech and policy in years: → Europe produces only 4 of the world’s 50 largest tech companies and lags badly in the technologies that will define the next decades → Mario Draghi’s 2024 competitiveness report diagnoses an existential risk: without radical change, stagnation threatens defence, pensions, healthcare and the entire social model → Nearly 2 years later, only partial implementation of the recommendations; the hardest reforms (scale-ups, capital markets, governance) still lag while U.S. tariffs and Chinese competition intensify → Collison (Stripe) and Draghi recruit ~55 top operators, economists (including Nobel laureates), CEOs and policymakers into a private Chatham House group → Goal: raise eyes from daily politics toward a common destiny - compete, build and grow again as the world’s second-largest market → Turn evidence into pressure and actionable ideas outside the slow official EU machinery Europe still has the assets. Europe still has massive potential. The key question is whether it has the urgency to act NOW. This group believes it can.