Antonios Nestoras, Founder and CEO of the European Policy Innovation Council, joined FNF’s Pretzels and Politics for a discussion on artificial intelligence, advanced technologies, SMEs, and Europe’s competitiveness agenda.
The discussion focused on one of the central questions facing Europe today: how can Europe turn technological ambition into broad-based economic capacity? Europe does not lack strategies, regulatory initiatives, or political declarations on AI and advanced technologies. The challenge is whether these ambitions can reach the productive economy — especially SMEs, which remain the backbone of Europe’s industrial and economic structure.
EPIC’s contribution underlined that Europe’s competitiveness problem is not only about invention. It is also about adoption, diffusion, and scale. Advanced technologies matter only if they can move beyond pilot projects, large firms, and policy documents, and become usable across sectors, regions, and smaller companies. For SMEs, this means access to skills, finance, infrastructure, regulatory clarity, and practical pathways for adopting AI.
This is where the European model faces its real test. “Competitiveness the European way” cannot mean choosing between innovation and regulation, or between sovereignty and openness. It must mean building the conditions under which European firms can innovate, comply, grow, and compete without being trapped by fragmentation or excessive complexity.
The debate also connects to EPIC’s work through the Draghi Observatory, which tracks the implementation of Europe’s competitiveness agenda and assesses whether policy commitments are being translated into concrete action. The Draghi report has made the diagnosis clear: Europe must close the gap between strategic ambition and delivery.
For EPIC, AI competitiveness will not be won by slogans. It will depend on whether Europe can build functioning markets, reduce fragmentation, support SMEs, and turn advanced technologies into real productive capacity across the economy.
