Why regulation alone won't build industry

Cristina Caffarra is an eminent economist and veteran antitrust practitioner who has become a leading voice behind Eurostack — a grassroots, industry-led push to rebuild Europe’s digital infrastructure as a sovereignty and competitiveness play. She has a strong argument to make:

• Europe is a “digital colony” — and it’s self-inflicted. US hyperscalers are excellent; Europe vacated the field through fragmentation, weak risk capital, and complacency.

• The "kill switch" is a distraction; dependency is the disease. The real risk is gradual denial: deprecated features, constrained access, and strategic leverage — not a Hollywood blockbuster blackout.

• Productivity is the core argument. Europe’s gap is investment per worker, especially into high-growth tech that diffuses across the whole economy.

• Regulation can’t create an industry. Antitrust and platform rules “nibble at the corners”, take years, and leave the giants stronger — while absorbing all the political oxygen.

• Europe chose theatre over building. “Taming Big Tech” became a substitute for the only question that mattered: where are Europe’s builders, customers, and scale-ups?

• Demand is the lever, not more grants. Without customers, no stack survives — procurement and enterprise buying decisions are the flywheel.

• Procurement should be the no-brainer. Every other major power has local preference norms; Europe’s non-discrimination logic is now being weaponised against European options. She notes that even the European Commission's own CIOs focuses on performance and efficiency alone. 

• Private enterprise is the real swing voter. Public sector is ~20% of demand; the other 80% sits with CEOs and CIOs who complain about European weakness — and then buy American.

• European tech can compete cost — but not ease of use. European components exist; what’s missing is end-to-end “peace of mind” and the glue between parts. 

• Mercedes is the case study. They want sensitive AI loads (e.g. autonomous driving) not wholly dependent on US infrastructure — but need suppliers and buyers to co-design workable, integrated alternatives.

• She argues that no one wants to “decouple” form the US — that’s a straw man. The practical goal is share: move European supply from <20% to something like 30–40% in a growing market.

• This is wartime logic, not business-as-usual. Europe has surged before under pressure; Caffarra argues that its time to stop waiting for Brussels and to start acting like a superpower.

She leaves us with a blunt challenge: will Europe keep buying convenience — or invest, through demand, in a tech stack that keeps its innovation future in its own hands?

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