By Sumayya
I was born in Germany, I went to school in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and I worked as a backup officer in the French navy. Today, I am a French citizen leading a French business that works inside more than 50 lands. Above all, I am a European.
My personal life story shows what Europe has finished: countries that battled each other for hundreds of years created a partnership defined by peace, freedom, and wealth. This partnership is based on democracy and fair laws, and it is dedicated to helping each other and protecting people. Even so, we have become so used to these conditions that we frequently act like they will always be there. While people on the outside still mostly view the European Union as a model of freedom and chance, we Europeans tend to look mostly at our weak spots: a slow and messy administration, getting older as a population, falling behind in technology, and a lack of giant global winning businesses in important fields.
These weak spots are real, but they are not impossible to fix if we take action right now. The longer we wait to deal with the problems we face, the less sure we will be in our skill to handle them. As fast technology shifts and growing rivalries between lands create deep confusion and even life-ending risks, the very last thing Europe needs is to forget its own power.
Those strengths are very large. The European Union makes up close to 20 percent of all global buying power: it stands as the world’s biggest single trade market, holding clear rules and controls. Thanks to saving habits that are about three times higher than in the United States, Europeans hold 35 trillion euros, which is equal to 39 trillion dollars, inside savings accounts. The euro currency area has a structurally high normal savings rate, which historically sits between 12 percent and 15 percent, and goes even higher in lands like France and Germany. European insurance businesses alone manage close to 10 trillion euros in money assets. The big task now is to move more of this cash into education, schooling research, new ideas, green and digital shifts, and military defense. To hit this goal, the European Union must finish its long-talked-about savings and investments partnership, which aims to help build up shared cash and banking markets. But using money alone will not create the world-winning technology field that is widely seen as vital for Europe’s future ability to compete.
As Mario Draghi pointed out in his important 2024 report on European competitiveness, the work output gap between the European Union and the United States is mostly a result of their differing technology fields. The big question is what has caused this split. Why does Europe focus only on small, slow improvements—making better versions of items we have already constructed for decades, like automobiles—instead of creating brand-new, game-changing inventions?
Part of the explanation sits in the rules, especially the rules for jobs and workers. With just a few exceptions—mostly the Scandinavian economies with their flexible security model—protecting workers from losing their jobs makes bringing in new methods and building up new activities much harder in European lands than it is inside the United States or China.
Europe’s social safety system is one of its greatest strengths, and protecting people sits right at the center of European identity. But making sure people are secure must not turn into a race to erase every single risk. Instead of blocking new inventions just to save every single job exactly as it looks today, Europe must assist citizens with steering through the coming changes. Too frequently, Europe’s safety model steps in too late, after workers have already lost their jobs and their skills have become old and useless. Instead of playing defense, we ought to take active steps as new inventions show up. Europeans must be protected from the dangers of change, but they must also be protected from the danger of standing still. By trying too hard to stop disruption, we turn people away from experimenting, investing, and starting new businesses.
Europe’s public well-being system must be kept safe, so it must be made modern and funded in a way that lasts. Important goals should include pushing up retirement ages, raising the number of people who have jobs through better access to lifelong schooling, helping people switch careers, and making cheap, long-term savings setups more easily available. Spending money on health care that stops sickness before it starts—which is vital to assist people with staying healthy and independent for a longer time—and building up long-term care services that fit an aging population are also completely necessary.
Such work would give comfort to all Europeans that they will not be left to take care of themselves alone, while giving young people more reasons to hope for a safe and wealthy future. Handling all of these tasks—from modernizing the economy to changing the public welfare system—must include talks with working partners. Such discussions can bring fair approval for difficult changes inside societies that are frequently deeply split into opposite sides.
All of this relies on Europe getting back its power to take action. The creation of the European Union started when six lands, dedicated to offering their young citizens a peaceful future, brought together the exact materials needed to make war: coal and steel. We ought to copy this model today, finding the specific plans that would truly secure a future defined by freedom, independent power, and helping each other. We must focus our political desire and our money investments on them, and move forward alongside the people who are ready to act.
This might not include every single one of the 27 European Union countries. In fact, on massive factory, technology, and military projects, it frequently will not. Groups of countries that are ready to work must clear the path first, and other nations can join in later once the plans prove to be successful.
Full independent power for Europe is not realistic. But, through a blend of strategic planning, brave policies, and flexible rules, Europe can build up winning champions in key businesses, just like we did with the Airbus airplane company back in the year 1970. In the field of artificial intelligence, even though Europe lags behind the United States and China in building the most advanced core models, it might be able to lead the world in actually using them, thanks to a solid factory setup. The reason to do this is certainly very strong: as an aging population causes the workforce to get smaller, productivity jumps driven by artificial intelligence could completely change the game.
To hit this goal—and to improve the future chances for young citizens—training workers for new jobs and creating higher-value employment positions must sit as top priorities. Spending money on critical and local infrastructure, as well as useful everyday artificial intelligence tools, is also required, not least to strengthen our own technology independence.
Believing in Europe does not mean protecting things exactly as they are right now. It means holding the big goal to follow total transformation. A clear feeling of target and meaning at the very top—held together by a powerful story focused on wealth, safety, and democracy—would assist citizens with visualizing a positive future, rather than hiding away inside old memories of the past. And sharp, decisive action would turn that meaning into real progress.
Europeans might not like the brand-new, more split and competitive worldwide setting that we find ourselves living in today, but this is the exact world that the European Union must stand up and face. No single member country can handle it all alone, and no other group of lands is in a better spot to win.
From an article written by Thomas Buberl, CEO of AXA
