DG Progress: Driving Europe Forward
EU-INC’s moment in Davos, an interview with the movement's co-initiator, and EU simplification initiatives abound
Hello, welcome to DG Progress* by Chamber of Progress, a tech industry business group working toward a fairer, more inclusive society. Our focus: promoting EU competitiveness, showcasing the positive impact of European technology, and bridging the gap between innovators and policymakers.
Europe is not at the mercy of industrial change; we are tech leaders with world-class talent and ambitions, global partnerships, and a prosperous single market. With the right policies, the continent can speed up its progress while defending what it means to be European. The Commission doesn’t have a Directorate General dedicated to this, but maybe it should.
Each month we’ll spotlight the entrepreneurs and policymakers building a better Europe from the ground up— and share ways you can get involved.
Thanks for reading,
Kay Jebelli and Patrick Grady
The DG Progress team
*not affiliated with the European Commission
🏗️ Making Progress
European founders have faced an uphill battle navigating Member State formalities as they scale across Europe. It’s often easier to incorporate in Delaware, not only for the deeper US capital markets, but because some of the national requirements are truly medieval (think, ink signatures, wax seals, and oral review of shareholder agreements). For the first time, a grassroots campaign has pushed a solution to create a single market for entrepreneurship onto the European stage.
🇪🇺 “We call it EU Inc.” President of the European Commission, Von der Leyen, finally endorsed the pan-European movement and crowdsourced proposal for a nimble, single corporate solution for European founders setting up and scaling up across the continent.
🇩🇪 The Start-up Party. Volt’s Co-Founder & MEP Damian Boeselgar has emerged as the European Parliament’s Advocate-in-Chief for start-ups, urging the EU to speed up the proposal and speaking to founders across the continent. But it looks like he’ll have some work to do, because early leaks leave a lot to be desired.
🇩🇪 Walk The Talk. EU Inc co-founder and investor Andreas Klinger has launched a Europe-focused fund doubling down on Europe’s world-class manufacturing capabilities. Already attracting deep interest, the future of European industry is clearly bright.
🇩🇪 Outgunned. Rheinmetall will soon be able to produce more artillery shells than the entire US defence industry, reported the Wall Street Journal. How’s that for sovereignty?
🇪🇺 Chips-Act in Action. The launch of a €2.5bn chips research hub in Leuven, Belgium was an occasion to remind the world that the EU already has world leading semiconductor technologies. “It’s true that we do have some of the key technologies, like ASML, that everyone is dependent [on] globally,” said European Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen.
🇫🇷🇧🇪 Sovereignty Unicorns. Defence tech startup Harmattan AI received a boost from compatriot Dassault Aviation to bring its valuation over the €1bn mark. Akido Security, a startup which automates cybersecurity vulnerability finding and fixing, also reached unicorn status.
⛽ Policy Pitstop
Should I Stay or Should I Go? That’s the question Allies for Startups is asking on behalf of EU businesses in a new Brussels-wide campaign. Heavy regulatory burdens are a big part of the story, and why simplification is critical for European competitiveness.
Why do ⅓ of Europe’s most innovative companies move abroad? Capital, regulatory burdens, and large unified markets, says new research from the European Investment Bank. All the more reason for an EU-INC solution.
Listen to European companies, we told critics of the EU’s simplification agenda.
“We have far exceeded the limit of overregulation,” Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever writes in his new book, “None of the global leading companies in this sector is European. And yet we pat ourselves on the back because we’re the first continent with far-reaching AI regulation.”
Slow down AI Act enforcement until proper standards are available, we wrote, echoing calls from EU AI companies and startups, to avoid uncertainty and chaos that would harm the AI ecosystem.
👉 Roger Dassen, CFO of ASML, back in October: “We started with regulating, to keep AI under the thumb. Someone who has a talent for artificial intelligence, the first they thing do with hard-earned money… is buy a ticket to Silicon Valley”
🌉 The Bridge
Where did the idea for EU-INC come from?
Investing across the EU is currently prohibitive. No one is able to understand all 27 legislative environments, and the likelihood of failure in startups only intensifies the risk of legal “gotcha’s”. Early-stage investment in all of Europe is the key to more momentum and success: Startups are a game of numbers. We simply need 100X the amount of startups for 10X the amount of unicorns, and a serious chance at the first Trillion-EUR company.
Can you talk about the disconnect between what EU companies need and the policy conversation happening in Brussels? What’s missing?
I clearly see a disconnect between theory and practice. Where Brussels on one side thinks of studies, policies, regulations, directives and law, entrepreneurs think in products, user adoption and growth. Naturally for the startup community the EU-INC must be an online service, where you login, found a company, raise money from investors and sell shares. This deficiency could prevent an ambitious EU-INC proposal by the Commission, and the implementation could suffer in its translation to an actual product.
Where were you when you heard the European Commission President, Von der Leyen, name-drop the EU, and what’s next for the movement?
We were actually in our weekly call with the EU-INC team, when one of us in parallel, listened to her speech, and told everyone to hold their thoughts and listen. That was quite the surprise. The next step is to critically review the proposal expected for March 18th from the Commission, and hopefully provide constructive solutions to make it a founder’s first solution to found, fund and scale innovation across the EU.
🛣️ Road Ahead
12 February: Dream team assembling. EU leaders are convening to discuss the bloc’s competitiveness ambitions. With both former Prime Ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta in attendance, there will be pressure on less ambitious Member States to focus on what Europe really needs in the world ahead.
13 March: Digital Omnibus Consultation. The EU is looking for feedback on how to simplify its digital rulebook. Have your say before the deadline here.
TBC March: EU Inc. launch. The EU will present its plans for EU Inc (nee 28th regime?), sometime in March, with a rollout currently scheduled for 2027.
TBC March: More competitiveness proposals due. The Commission is also set to release proposals for the European Innovation Act, Cloud and AI Development Act, and Chips Act.
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