Europe needs its own J.D. Vance - and fast

As founders and investors gather at Slush this week, everyone is talking about EU.Inc - the campaign to create a single startup entity across the European Union. It’s likely to spark long-overdue reform.

The momentum is extraordinary, at least by Brussels standards. Thanks to Andreas Klinger’s vision and persistence, EU.Inc has gone from concept to consultation in under a year. It’s proof of what community belief and action can achieve for a better Europe.

But that’s also the problem. Andreas is shouldering the work of a 60,000-strong institution. His success exposes the void left by decades of neglect by the EU.

When I co-founded Slush in 2008, technology was still for geeks and engineers. Today it runs through every artery of society, and whoever leads in technology owns the future. Yet Europe’s institutions still treat tech as a threat, not as power. That misunderstanding is costing us dearly. Europe is no longer seen as a global player: it’s seen as a museum or, at best, a medium-sized marketplace.

In 2025, we’re living through the end of the post-1945 order. The world is reorganising around great-power competition between the U.S. and China, and technology is the battlefield. Those who control AI models will shape knowledge, media, and science, and those who control the microchip supply chain will dominate the global economy.

This is about sovereignty as well as economic growth. A continent that must import its AI, cloud, and chips is not a power: it’s a colony. Faced with this reality, the EU has buried its head in the sand - focusing on regulating in the place of creating. In a landmark report commissioned by the EU itself, former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi exposed the extent to which fragmented markets and complex regulations are key reasons Europe fails to create global champions.

Telling the EU to get out of our way isn’t enough. It’s not going away, and it’s the only institution we have with the scale to compete with the U.S. and China. But right now, the tech community doesn’t send its best people there. Imagine being in a championship final and sending your B-team… that’s Europe today.

For a look at what it means to take technology seriously, look at the U.S. J.D. Vance went from VC to Senator to Vice President. You don’t need to agree with his politics to see the point: the technology elite understands power - and acts on it. They don’t just lobby; they participate. They fund, they strategize, and they run for office.

Who will be Europe’s equivalents?

Andreas Klinger has lit a beacon for Europe’s startup community. But if Europe’s founders and investors truly believe in sovereignty through innovation, it’s time for them to stop cheering from the sidelines and step onto the political field.

Here are three concrete steps:

1. Elect our best players at national level.

Start by electing national leaders who understand what the EU has become - and who are ready to change it. Yes, the EU’s machinery is hard to influence, and its leadership process is undemocratic and opaque. But we can at least ensure we have the best team members sitting on the European Council.

2. Coordinate capital and influence.
Channel financial, social, and intellectual capital into a professional operation that champions pro-innovation policy. The community needs to extend national lobbying efforts to Brussels, and engage with voices in the European Parliament who actually understand technology - that’s how we can shape the rules of the game.

3. Put our own people in Brussels.
Follow the J.D. Vance model, and step up from supporting campaigns to running in them. The only way to ensure the people writing Europe’s tech laws understand technology is to become those people. Move from the periphery to the ballot box - and from the ballot box to the chamber.

Change is possible. Europe was once the cradle of the Enlightenment, the home of risk-takers, inventors, and visionaries. But we’ve replaced faith in progress with a “precautionary principle” that fears the future and manages risk instead of seizing opportunity.

The best example of such dynamism and society-wide belief in the importance of technology is from the Manhattan Project followed by the 1960s U.S. Space Race. Kennedy’s moonshot wasn’t about regulation; it was a cultural project that inspired a generation. That’s what Europe needs right now: a mission that makes us believe in building, not just governing. We must celebrate our founders, builders, and engineers as heroes, stop seeing technology as a threat to contain, and start seeing it as our most powerful tool. But to get there, we need people in power who understand the urgency and the importance of technology for our future.

The EU is a sleeping superpower. The question isn’t whether we have the means to wake it - we do. The question is this: who’s willing to stop being a spectator and become a player.