Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis told a forum in Aix-en-Provence that the European Union must stop thinking in terms of national champions and focus on building “European champions” able to compete globally.
Pierrakakis was speaking at the Rencontres Économiques during a panel on “One World, Clashing Visions: Who Sets the Standards?”, alongside Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot, the Eurogroup informed on Friday.
He said “the era of geopolitical innocence is over” and called for what he described as a “mentality shift” in Europe.
The Eurogroup president said Europe already has “European champions” in technology and banking, but argued that EU countries should stop defining leading firms as French, Greek or German, and instead see them as European companies.
He stated that European companies that do not grow to “global champion” status would struggle to compete in what he described as a world being technologically disrupted “in the most drastic possible terms.”
5G and a fragmented telecoms market
Pierrakakis said Europe has the infrastructure capacity for 5G — the fifth generation of mobile network technology — and has “two global champions”, which he located in Finland and Sweden.
But he cautioned Europe had not created an ecosystem around those companies and pointed to a “fragmented telecom market”, adding that there are “27 auctions for 5G” and he expected the same approach for 6G.
He also said that, given budget constraints, Europe needs to make choices about where to build European champions.
Pierrakakis called for Europe to “get your house in order” and “fix the plumbing of the European economy” to unlock growth, and said the EU should make strategic choices to become “less and less dependent” in key areas.
