Former President of Estonia
and Member of the Board of Directors, GLOBSEC
The panellists used this session to challenge the terms of conventional debate about Europe’s decline, arguing that the continent's apparent weaknesses — fragmentation, regulatory complexity, asymmetric threat perceptions across member states — are also sources of resilience that more centralised powers cannot replicate. The panel was unsparing about Europe's self-inflicted vulnerabilities: household savings flowing into American markets, capital markets that remain nationally fragmented despite decades of effort, procurement and regulatory cycles too slow to match Ukraine's battlefield innovation tempo, and a demographic trajectory that no government has found the political courage to address honestly. Ivan Krastev offered the session's sharpest reframe: the problem is not which answer Europe chooses but that it keeps asking the same questions, and genuine transformation requires changing the questions themselves. The session closed with a shared forecast: the strategic error Europe will most regret in ten years is not military unreadiness but the failure to secure control over its own data.
Livestream Link: https://youtube.com/live/tlzX8it_OV0?feature=share
Hosted by GLOBSEC GeoTech Center
Europe has built the world's most comprehensive AI regulatory framework. But regulation alone does not produce adoption—and without adoption at scale, Europe risks ceding its economicfuture to faster-moving economies. Already, 51% of Europe's highest growth startups are considering relocating outside Europe to scale faster. The sectors that form the backbone of European economies — manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, energy, and public services continue to lag in deploying AI at scale. The barriers are not primarily about technology. They are about howquickly European businesses can move, scale, and compete in a global AI economy where innovation cycles are compressing from decades to months. Skills shortages and other barriers thatburden integration are slowing adoption precisely when speed matters most. With the EU pursues its competitiveness agenda, the priority is to move from diagnosis to prescription, pinpointing the specific policy, procurement, and investment reforms that will determine whether AI reaches Europe's factory floors, hospitals, and public services at scale —and whether Europe capturesthe €191 billion in potential economic value at stake.
