A study by Digital Europe released this June and titled ‘The EU’s critical gap: Rethinking economic security to put Europe back on the map’’ notes that the EU has fallen behind its rivals and competitor in seven out of eight critical technology areas, identified as such in the EU’s Economic Security Strategy. These are: semiconductors, AI, manufacturing, quantum computing , biotech, energy tech, space tech, and advanced connectivity. It is only leading in advanced connectivity but as Digital Europe notes “even in this area, investments and profits are mainly captured by the US”.
There is consensus that the EU does a decent job of cultivating talent but not enough of it and producing top notch scientists, but lags behind in investment. Given the heavily subsidized tech sectors both in the US (especially after the Inflation Reduction Act) and China, the EU is handicapped regarding the creation of major players on an international level. Another factor is that the EU doesn’t scale: it is 27 distinct markets and 27 distinct R&D policies.
A great overview of the state of the international competition across the main technology players is presented by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, which compares the research produced in countries and blocks, by their (%) proportion of high-impact research output across 64 technologies. This is a summary for 2023. China is leading in 53 out of 64 areas, in 11 it has near monopoly status. The EU is doing better than at first one believed because the EU countries are listed here separately.
Given the criticality of technology, it seems important to have a discussion about the state of European high-tech and its prospects. Asia Times notes that the EU’s apparent underperformance is a positive in terms of democracy, given also that it is the lead regulator of technology world-wide.
At Together for Europe – Movement for the European Federal Union ,we believe that a discussion about the technological future of our continent is important as it ties in with the issue of EU independence and geopolitical role, as well as the properity of Europe. It will be one of the main axes that we will be organizing discussions and events this following year