Hello and welcome to the Centre for European Reform podcast, Unpacking Europe.

I'm Octavia Hughes and this episode will be the last of 2024. So today we'll be

looking back on the year and ahead to 2025 with some of the researchers here at the CER. To start,

I'm joined by our assistant director, Zach Mayers, who's going to bring us up to speed on tech

and competitiveness in the EU. So Zach, can you run us through some of the highs and lows of the

year? Thanks, Octavia. Good to be here. Maybe I'll give you one highlight and one possible low light.

I think the highlight for a lot of people looking at European economics was the report by

former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on EU competitiveness. And I think uniquely for a report of this type, almost everyone who

read it kind of lauded the way that it really clearly set out the huge competitiveness problem

that's facing Europe and kind of the reasons for that. So it pointed to a lot of issues,

many of which are kind of not within Europe's direct control. For example, the growing closed nature of many of Europe's major trading partners,

and including American isolationism.

But I think in particular, looking at tech,

one of the problems that Draghi points to and gives a lot of attention to

is the lack of business dynamism in Europe

and the need for us to be able to create more companies

that are innovative and that can grow.

One of the most telling figures that he provides is that a very, very large proportion of the

American economy and stock markets are characterized by companies that have grown and been

created in the last decade or two, whereas

in Europe, the largest companies have been around for a much longer period of time. And, you know,

Europe has really kind of missed out on the high productive high tech sector. And so my low light

...