Surprised to see the negativity in the comments - if executed well, this is exactly the sort of thing governments should be aiming to do: solving social coordination problems and funding with long-term horizons.
You’re completely misinterpreting and taking out of context the whole point I’m trying to make for a cheap swipe at Europe. Do you actually disagree with what I said or are you trying to win Internet points with semantics? Do you even disagree with the bulk of my complaint about investment in Europe?
Do you even disagree that investors try to take a larger equity position in companies in the EU than in the US?
> don’t believe Europe can create unicorns so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for their investments
There sure would like though. What I've followed in the Horizon program was a fixation of chasing "last years" technology.
Problem was , that for all those funding programmes they had quite stingent company requirements which stopped startups and small companies from having a go at it. Larger companies had no issue navigating this process and chewing the cash without actually delivering good or innovative products.
Can you tell me which regulations are stopping them? The UK for example bent over backwards to make acquiring a banking licence part of a clear process. I think this is harder at the EU level but for me laws like GDPR are actually very reasonable (having implemented a system for container shipping crew, including lots of personal information like passport images).
I think the EU is increasingly aware of its faults, especially in Germany & France. Happy to watch them cook and I say that as an American who has watched on with pain at what the EU has done to itself over the last decade+.
I can't speak for France, but for Germany, unfortunately, by most metrics that matter (affordable housing, infrastructure, subjective well-being, energy costs, labor markets, etc.) compared to 20 years ago, yes. However, compared to most other countries, Germany is still doing quite well. So it all depends on the context for how you interpret the data.
For example there is increasing consensus that Merkel's "black-zero" budget requirements set the stage for today's collapsing German infrastructure and lack of productivity growth due to decreased public investment.
Think it has much more to do with traditional EU regulator attitudes around the dual of labor & capital markets. Both are very dysfunctional in Europe, with labor probably slightly edging out in terms of dysfunction.
thats also not helping, but it's not exactly a secret that German public infrastructure from roads to rails to electricity and whatnot are also all crumbling.
And wait till the EU starts paying it's own defense bills without the US, which is what it wants to do. But with money from where? Education? Healthcare? Welfare?
I'm thinking about things like life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care, violent crime, suicide, incarceration, traffic safety...
In my view, yes - especially when you subset to native born populations. Many europeans are a proud people though so I understand this is contentious, regardless of what the numbers say.
The money never goes to actually relevant or innovative projects, because there is a whole industry devoted to "proposal writing". Companies will literally bring dedicated teams together to sit in a room and think how they could possibly grift EU money, because they cannot meaningfully compete on the open market and need to fund 25-50% of their personnel costs through such programs.
Think Siemens, Orange S.A., Technikon, Philips N.V., T-Systems, but also (!) IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey.
There is a whole industry in Croatia specializing in EU money extraction. Hundreds of agencies writing proposals to get grants for their clients and taking their cut. Tons of those are grifts with money directly landing into people's pockets, seaside villas being bought, hotels being made. It's so blatant that politicians accuse each other for not extracting as much money as they’ve could. After decades of blatant stealing EPPO (European Public Prosecutors Office) got involved. When they go for small fish that’s fine, but when they start investigating government politicians they (government) take the case from them and those guys get a slap on the wrist. There are just so many cases that EPPO can do only a fraction of them. Terrible situation, and I don’t think it’ll change because EU doesn’t give too much of a care about a small country like that. And it’s not their money in a sense, so they care even less.
I have a feeling that the only new thing Germany is able to execute well today is regulations. So, more forms to fax and receive answers by snail mail.
If governments would (always) execute well then we could just let them do everything and it would be great. But they don't because there is no competition.