2 May 2025
By Yogesh Hirdaramani
In the landmark Draghi Report, former European Central Bank president and former Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi, identified Europe’s lagging tech sector as a key strategic weakness, hampering competitiveness and widening the productivity gap between Europe and the US.
In an address to the European Parliament in September 2024, Draghi stated, “We are severely lagging in new technologies; Only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European... The core problem in Europe is that new companies with new technologies are not rising in our economy.”
The release of the report, buoyed by 2025’s geopolitical turbulence, has emboldened calls for Europe to strengthen its digital strategic autonomy, broadly defined as the capabilities, capacities, and controls necessary for Europe to act on its long-term future.
The fourth edition Point Zero Forum jointly hosted by GFTN and the Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF) from 5 – 7 May in Zurich, Switzerland, will convene financial, technological, and regulatory leaders to address the steps Europe can take to spur innovation within its domestic tech sector, draw on the lessons learnt from the experiences of other countries, and continue to shape the policy landscape of AI and tech regulation globally.
Spurring European innovation
Europe’s ability to secure its digital strategic autonomy hinges on one critical factor: closing the innovation gap. That means developing the region’s domestic tech sector, supporting the growth of sovereign AI capabilities, translating world-class research into market-ready products, and empowering tech startups to scale regionally amidst complex regulatory headwind.
This urgent call to action sets the stage for the opening of the Forum Stage at the Point Zero Forum on 6 May, where a high-stakes conversation will unfold in “The Innovation Blueprint: Unlocking Global Competitiveness in a Changing World”.
Featuring top voices from Microsoft, NVIDIA, and UBS, and joined by Swiss State Secretary for International Finance Daniel Stoffel, the panel will dive into the strategies Europe must embrace to drive AI innovation in an increasingly polarized global tech landscape.
Meanwhile, the Future Matters stage will shine a spotlight on the human stories behind innovation. The Founders Peak will showcase Europe’s entrepreneurial spirit from the frontlines of startup life – culminating in two focused panel discussions that confront the tough realities startups face in scaling: complex regulatory barriers and funding hurdles.
Adding another layer to the conversation, sessions on 6 and 7 May will explore how industry-academia partnerships are shaping the future of innovation. These include nurturing the next generation of innovators and translating cutting-edge research into market-ready products.
Realising the EuroStack vision
Over 80% of Europe’s digital technologies are imported – rendering the region increasingly reliant on the United States and China. Recognising these growing dependencies, the concept of the EuroStack has emerged as a North Star for the digital sovereignty movement in Europe, as described in a report commissioned by Bertelsmann Stiftung.
The EuroStack has galvanised a movement around building an independent, common tech stack that can enable Europe to lead in next-generation technologies, including foundational technologies (such as microchips) and advanced applications (such as sovereign AI).
This will require leaders to draw on Europe’s history of building open-source software to develop decentralised infrastructure that reflects European values of transparency and privacy, as well as to draw on lessons from similar movements in the Global South, such as India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) drive.
At this critical inflection point, a roundtable titled “Decoupling from Big Tech: Towards digital sovereignty in Europe”, moderated by Martin Hullin, Director of the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Digitalisation and the Common Good program, will convene practitioners, researchers, and policymakers from Europe, India, and beyond to discuss much-needed strategies to achieving the ambitious EuroStack vision.
The roundtable will extend the conversation to digital payments, drawing on perspectives from Barnabás Ferenczi, Head of Board of the Digital Payments Working Group at Germany’s digital industry association, Bitkom, and Julie Guetta, Technical Solutions Lead, Mojaloop, an open-source software project that aims to build interoperable payments platforms.
Other sessions will address these concerns from a global perspective. These include the roundtable, “Working 'Above Borders': Governance, architecture & standards of digital public infrastructure”, which will address building DPI systems that support global connectivity and participation in the digital economy.
Regulatory leadership as a competitive advantage
Despite these concerns, Europe has a chance to make a real difference in the global tech landscape. Europe is well known for the “Brussels Effect,” the phenomenon where legislation crafted in the EU sets the tone for regulatory frameworks developed elsewhere, particularly in the digital realm.
Contrary to popular wisdom, regulation and innovation do not need to be in conflict. Pro-competitive regulatory frameworks have successfully fostered innovation and nurtured thriving fintech ecosystems in Europe, as detailed in a recent report by The Lisbon Council.
Rather than serving as a roadblock, thoughtful regulation that removes barriers to market entry and establishes common standards can be a competitive edge.
Roundtables at the Forum, such as “AI governance in a competitive world: Balancing innovation, regulation and ethics”, will address the pioneering risk-based approach of the EU AI Act, the trade-offs the Act poses, and whether ethical AI will emerge as a competitive advantage for European businesses.
Likewise, the session “Trust in AI: Will consumer protection and data privacy regulations hinder or enable AI adoption in the Global South?” will examine the impact of these regulatory frameworks on AI adoption in the Global South.
Finally, the Point Zero Forum will tackle the impact of EU regulations such as the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and the challenge of nurturing innovation.
Peter Kerstens, Advisor, DG FISMA, at the European Commission, widely credited as the father of MiCA and DORA, will provide his perspectives at several sessions at the Forum on the future of EU regulations, including a mainstage session on digital assets regulation.
Though the digital sovereignty movement aims to rebuild Europe’s competitive edge, foster resilience, and mitigate strategic dependencies, policymakers and researchers will have to address critical questions of deepening innovation capacities and managing trade-offs. These will ultimately determine if Europe’s regulatory prowess can emerge as its secret weapon in closing the innovation gap.
Further reading
Bria, F., Timmers, P., & Gernone, F. (2025). EuroStack – A European Alternative for Digital Sovereignty. Bertelsmann Stiftung. https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/publications/publication/did/eurostack-a-european-alternative-for-digital-sovereignty
Draghi, M. (2024). The Future of European Competitiveness—A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe. European Commission. https://commission.europa.eu/document/97e481fd-2dc3-412d-be4c-f152a8232961_en
Hariharan, V., & Natarajan, S. (2025). Digital Sovereignty and Payments: A Case Study of the National Payments Corporation of India. In M. Jiang & L. Belli (Eds.), Digital Sovereignty in the BRICS Countries: How the Global South and Emerging Power Alliances Are Reshaping Digital Governance (pp. 105–123). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://cambridge.org/core/books/digital-sovereignty-in-the-brics-countries/digital-sovereignty-and-payments/D6AB44B95ECEAD5265C5A299BBAC915B
Osimo, D., Barbieri, V., & Moise, C. (2025). When Europe Scales: How Startups and Scale-ups Can Drive European Competitiveness and Why Good Regulation Is More Important than Ever. The Lisbon Council. https://lisboncouncil.net/publications/when-europe-scales/
Warso, Z. (2024). XII. Toward Public Digital Infrastructure: From Hype to Public Value. AI Now Institute. https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/xii-toward-public-digital-infrastructure-from-hype-to-public-value