Embracing Risk for the Future of Europe

Today, the European Union finds itself alone and isolated geographically and politically, between Putin who doesn't care about it and Trump who only cares about himself. It isn’t totally ready to be in this situation but that doesn’t mean that it won’t and can’t be ready in the future. To get there, I believe, we Europeans need to embrace risk.

In most situations we can choose between taking more or less risk. But we might get into situations where taking risk is the only option. The latter is the reality we Europeans now face.

Concretely, we need to take chances to do things that we have put on hold, have never done before, or were hesitating on trying and implementing. The most important of these is the acceleration of innovation through science and technology, and so, the creation of real progress. This turns out to be a little tricky in Europe, because innovation requires money. If there is no money, there won’t be any innovation and not the other way around. And even if there is money it needs to find the innovators. In Europe there is plenty of money but it can’t find the innovators. Nevertheless, there is a path to get there.

First, we need to finalise the creation of an integrated and efficient capital market within the European Union. This means a complete integration of the current 27 capital markets which would allow for a simple and dynamic flow of capital between 450million-ish Europeans. Second, we need to continue shifting to a system that deprioritizes debt financing and prioritizes equity financing.

This means that we all need to invest more of our hard earned money into projects and people that are creating a future that we want, and not just deposit it at the bank as savings or invest it abroad. The great thing about this is that by doing so we are essentially voting for a future that we want. We are fully embodying the principles of liberal democracies which are at the core of what Europe should be, and on the side we might even make lots of money.

Europe needs the people who innovate and take risks but also financiers and investors —which we all are in daily life anyway— who are willing to take risks.