One year after Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness, Tech.eu asks founders, investors and executives how much has changed. In its anniversary article, 0TO9 CEO Tord Topsholm is among those quoted. The piece centres on the EU-INC campaign for a “28th regime”, a single EU-wide legal framework for startups.
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Where Europe loses its ideas

Topsholm starts from Draghi’s own diagnosis: Europe is good at producing innovation and much less good at turning it into businesses that grow. His statement, as quoted by Tech.eu: “Draghi was right to pinpoint our struggle translating innovation into commercialisation. Entrepreneurs are the true drivers of innovation across every sector, so we echo Draghi’s call for greater investment to boost European productivity to enable us to compete with global heavyweights like the US and China. If entrepreneurs win, we all win.” – Tord Topsholm, CEO of 0TO9, quoted in Tech.eu
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Entrepreneurs first, and not deregulation

The argument has two parts. The first puts entrepreneurs at the centre of competitiveness, and links it to Draghi’s call for more investment. The second concerns regulation. According to Tech.eu, Topsholm does not see deregulation as the answer, because it would weaken consumer protections. He argues instead that Europe should build better infrastructure for businesses to operate in.
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The wider case in the Tech.eu piece

Topsholm’s comments sit within a larger collection of voices. Tech.eu reports that more than 16,000 founders and investors back EU-INC’s proposals, which include a single EU-level corporate form, a digital registry designed to allow company set-up within 48 hours, a standardised investment instrument called EU-FAST, and a pan-European framework for employee stock options. Henrik Landgren, Co-Founder and CPTO of Gilion, is cited on an annual investment gap of €800 billion.

This summary was generated by AI and edited by 0TO9. The full piece by Cate Lawrence in Tech.eu, with the other contributors’ comments, is available on its site.