It is part of a new standing dialogue called the European Tech Creators, which includes heavyweights Airbus, ASML, Ericsson, Mistral, Nokia, SAP and Siemens. The group wants the EU institutions to better serve their needs — much like the entente between government and industry seen in competing regions like the United States and China.
“We need to talk all the time because what is at stake for Europe is significant. And establishing a dialog takes time,” ASML’s Fouquet said. “The people we compete with are doing that extremely effectively,” he said.
Guillaume Faury, the CEO of Airbus, said: “We are coming from the same understanding that what Europe is doing today is not what Europe should be doing … If it is a lobbying exercise, it’s a lobbying exercise for successful Europe.”
The group got a recent audience with von der Leyen in late April and carried a blunt message: deregulate, or else squander Europe’s future as an innovation powerhouse. A week later, with a strong nudge from Germany, industry scored wins in the AI simplification bill with fewer rules and a postponed deadline.
Part of their pitch is for Brussels to deregulate faster, ease the path to mergers and complete the single market, in closer consultation with industry.
“We have allowed the market to be fully fragmented, giving no one the scale to be competitive,” Börje Ekholm, the outgoing CEO of Ericsson, argued. “We need to take a step back and take an industrial thought process here.”