- 16 hours ago
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Can Europe stand on its own two feet?
00:03Here to discuss that, please welcome Nick Clegg, Enrico Letta and Maurice Levy to the stage.
00:27Enrico Letta, Nick Clegg will be joining me.
00:32Please welcome them very warmly.
00:52Thank you, Enrico, thank you, Nick, for accepting to be with us and to discuss a little bit about Europe.
01:00You have been both extremely involved in very important function in Europe.
01:06And I will start with you, Nick, with one question.
01:11You have been vice prime minister of the UK at a time where the UK was part of Europe.
01:20Since then, a lot of things happened, including something which is called Brexit.
01:24Do you consider that the UK is better off out of Europe or inside Europe?
01:30That's like asking a child, do they like lollipops in the summer?
01:34And the answer is, I'm afraid, from my point of view, wholly predictable, for those of you who know my
01:40record on this subject.
01:42And also, perhaps more importantly, I think borne out by the facts, the economic facts are unambiguous in their effect
01:53on investment,
01:55on the effect on particularly British businesses seeking to export into Europe.
02:00We were told by the Brexiteers that leaving the European Union would be a blow against bureaucracy,
02:06and yet our borders have a tsunami of red tape now suffocating our importers and exporters,
02:13and a period, of course, of almost non-stop political and economic instability,
02:19which has ensued in the last 10 years since the Brexit vote.
02:22I was in government as Deputy Prime Minister of a coalition government from 2010 to 2015.
02:28The last full year of that government, the UK economy was growing almost at 3%, 2.9%.
02:34It was growing faster at an annual rate than the United States was.
02:39That is unimaginable now.
02:41And since then, there has just been this persistent political instability, one Prime Minister after the next.
02:47We now have even more instability, this time under a Labour government.
02:49Keir Starmer may not be Prime Minister by next week.
02:52And, of course, political instability feeds economic weakness as well.
02:56It's extremely difficult for people to make ambitious investment decisions if everything is so unstable around them.
03:03So I think it has been an unambiguously bad thing for the UK.
03:06But you could answer that question better than I can.
03:09I don't think it's been great for the EU either.
03:11I mean, at a time when we need to find strength in being the sum of our parts,
03:18as this huge geostrategic conflict between America and China plays out over our heads,
03:25in a sense there should be no distinction between the EU and Ukraine and the EU and Norway and the
03:29EU and the UK.
03:30We've got to think of ourselves as a sort of Eurovision continent, perhaps without Australia's participation.
03:37But we need to think of ourselves in hemispheric terms because we are only going to thrive if we develop
03:44hemispheric strength.
03:47And that, in my view, doesn't just include the UK, but also includes most especially perhaps Ukraine,
03:54but also the current after-countries, many of whom are wanting to join the European Union.
03:59So, thank you, Enrico.
04:01I will put the other side of the equation a question, which is, as you have been not only Prime
04:12Minister of Italy,
04:13but a very important member of the EU, including writing reports, and one which is extremely important.
04:24How do you feel regarding Europe? Is it better off without the UK or with the UK?
04:32Let me start by asking you, because we have the privilege to have on stage the men thanks to whom
04:38we are all here,
04:39because Maurice Lévy is the big, big creator of this fantastic gathering.
04:44So, please join us in a great round of applause to Maurice Lévy.
04:48Thank you. Thank you, Maurice. Thank you very much.
04:53My answer is very easy.
04:55It would be better to have the UK in, but I say that also starting giving you,
05:03I know it's very complicated when we discuss about history to say if.
05:09But I ask you to think a little bit on one if that is very important of the topics of
05:15VivaTech.
05:17One of the reasons why in Europe we are lagging behind the US is the fragmentation of our financial market.
05:27The US financial market is one, is big, and is able with a magnitude of investments to change the world
05:37of tech.
05:38The European financial market doesn't exist.
05:42We have 27, the UK is another one, Switzerland another one.
05:47And so, we have many financial markets, all fragmented, we don't have this magnitude.
05:53When you think on GDP, real economy, we, the Europeans, we are 18% of the world's GDP, 18.
06:04The US, 25, we play in the same championship.
06:07And when it comes to market cap, to finance, our 18% becomes 12.
06:16The 25 of the US becomes 60, 6-0 is not the same championship, is Champions League and Seconde Division.
06:29That is the difference between 60.
06:31We don't know anything about Seconde Division, you should say it in Italian.
06:3560 and 12, but the key point is, in 2014, when Nick was there in government, the European Union, with
06:46a big push from the last UK commissioner, Jonathan Hill,
06:52launched the Capital Markets Union proposal, with the idea to have London as financial capital of the entire European Union.
07:00Brexit killed also this integration.
07:04And so, today, we are trying to relaunch.
07:06I, with this report on the single market, launched the project of the Savings and Investments Union, the 28th regime.
07:13Things are moving.
07:14But we are 10 years later.
07:16Can you imagine, no Brexit, completion of the Capital Markets Union, London, European capital at the same level of New
07:28York, of Hong Kong, of Singapore, of Dubai.
07:31It would be a totally different story, and for the tech, also.
07:37Here, we would be here discussing about a completely different scenario.
07:42I say that because sometimes thinking about what we lost and what are the potential of a more integrated European
07:52system is also because of that.
07:54You can say the same about the telcos.
07:58Absolutely.
07:59Absolutely.
08:01In reality, the single market today in Europe is integrated, well integrated.
08:09We have also the euro, that is a great success.
08:12But there are three fields, energy, connectivity, and financial markets.
08:17Well, for political reasons in the 90s, we all decided to postpone after the euro, the creation of the euro.
08:26Saying that now digesting the euro is not easy, so we need maybe to postpone a little bit.
08:33And we did it because at that time, in the 90s, the dimension of the big European countries, France, the
08:41UK, Germany, Italy, was big enough, we were big enough to be competitors standing alone at world level.
08:49I always remember, and I'm sure that you will smile on that, my own country, Italy, when we created the
08:58single market in the 90s, 60 million people, China and India together, more than 3 billion people, Italy was economically
09:11as big as China and India together.
09:16You are smiling, and I think it's correct, today, there are 20 times Italy, 30 years later.
09:22But because at that time, we thought that we were able, standing alone, to compete.
09:27Today, it's so clear that no European country, standing alone, is able to compete on all this.
09:34In the 90s, Maurice, you remember very well.
09:36Yes, I remember a single market in 1982.
09:38But we remember that we sold iPhones, not iPhones, but mobile phones, to the Americans.
09:47Yes.
09:48The iPhone, all the different mobiles were European mobiles, and the Americans were buying our European mobiles.
09:58Today, we buy American technology.
10:00Why?
10:01Because of the fragmentation.
10:04Nick, you have been not only a politician, but you spent a few years in the Silicon Valley.
10:12And building on what Enrico has said, there is one question which is extremely important.
10:19Europe is producing some of the best scientists, some of the best physicists, some of the best mathematicians, entrepreneurs.
10:30And many of them end up by either creating a startup which is, at the end of the day, bought
10:42by a big American firm,
10:45or they are hired by a big American firm.
10:49So, why this is happening, and why do we have this kind of situation, and we have not yet been
10:59able to solve it?
11:01For the reasons that Enrico said.
11:04Our persistent, crippling Achilles' heel is fragmentation.
11:12Scale matters.
11:13Size matters.
11:14Sometimes it doesn't.
11:16Under some, there are some economic models, there are some periods in history where size doesn't matter.
11:22It really, really matters now.
11:25And that was certainly the case with the network effects that you saw as these digital platforms emerged,
11:32most of them American, over the last 10, 15 years, in social media and so on.
11:37But it's even more the case during this transformer-based LLM paradigm that we are now in.
11:46Because large language models are an almost uniquely inefficient technology.
11:53They cost huge amounts of capital, as well as energy, water, and so on.
12:00So, they are only, you can only train these models, you can only build these models from the ground up
12:07if you have access to almost unimaginable amounts of capital,
12:11which comes to Enrico's point.
12:13And the only place, certainly on either side of the Atlantic, where any of these companies have access to that
12:20amount of capital is, of course, in the U.S.
12:22with this, I mean, the U.S. capital market is just a beast.
12:25I mean, it's just exploded in size.
12:28We're not even in the same galaxy, yet alone the same football division.
12:32I mean, I'll give you a, I calculated, what was it, a month ago, the big hyperscalers, Amazon, Microsoft, Google,
12:38Meta, and so on, did their earnings calls.
12:40And I calculated that if you put those earnings calls together, the hyperscalers and OpenAI and Anthropic have now declared
12:50publicly they will spend around 740 billion U.S. dollars in the coming year on AI infrastructure alone.
12:59And that figure is likely to increase.
13:01By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, that means that these American hyperscalers are spending every five to six weeks,
13:10every time, every five to six weeks, what the United Kingdom spends on defense in a year.
13:15So the scale of this, now, for what it's worth, I personally think that the LLM paradigm could well be
13:22disrupted.
13:23And in fact, I think it should be disrupted, which is why I think you had Jan LeCun on the
13:27stage earlier.
13:27I think what Jan is doing with AmiLabs, I should declare an interest, I'm both a friend of Jan's, but
13:32also a lead investor in AmiLabs, I think is so important.
13:36Because with the exception of Mistral and a few other instances, Europe is not going to close the gap in
13:43the transformer-based LLM paradigm.
13:46It's just we don't have the capital, we don't have the scale.
13:49What we must, however, do is not miss our opportunity to lead for the next generation of AI models, post
13:58-LLM models, what some people call world models, which Jan can explain better than I can.
14:04Fei-Fei Li and others are doing that.
14:06And indeed, the wider platform shift from mobile computing to immersive spatial 3D computing, using wearables and so on, where
14:16I think Europe has got some really essential ingredients which could forge a world-leading position.
14:22But, to just really amplify what Enrico says, if we don't create scale, capital markets is one example, but the
14:30other one is just having a market which operates at scale.
14:36We have a single market roughly in goods.
14:38We have a single market in the world of atoms.
14:41We don't really have a single market in the world of bytes.
14:46I mean, it's easier, I'm being a bit facetious here, it's easier these days to transport farm manure from Toulouse
14:54to Helsinki than it is to ship a new piece of software.
14:57This is a continent, we now have 27, still today, 27 different data protection authorities, 17 different data protection authorities
15:06in Germany,
15:08interpreting a pre-generative AI law, GDPR, differently from each other, and applying it to a technology that barely exists.
15:15It's madness.
15:16In a data-driven economy, we have almost satirical levels of regulatory fragmentation.
15:24So, you're absolutely right, we have the inventors, we have the engineering excellence, we have the entrepreneurial zeal.
15:29I've certainly seen in my time, when I became Deputy Prime Minister in 2010, there was a small but pretty
15:36insignificant venture capital startup scene in London.
15:39And then for a number of changes, not least changes that my government introduced, you've now got a really vibrant
15:45VC and startup scene in London.
15:47One of the most vibrant ones out of the United States.
15:49So, we have been successful at building the first rungs of the ladder.
15:52If you want to build the next rungs of the ladder, it's all about scale.
15:57Scale, size matters.
16:00We can't agree more, but what you said regarding LLMs and the future model is a bit frightening,
16:08and particularly the fact that we have 27 countries and 27 problems and different ways of attacking the problem.
16:18And Rico, when you are listening to what Nick has said, do you believe that there is beyond the problem
16:26of market size
16:28and beyond the problem of capital, some other issues that we should have to tackle, regulation, maybe bureaucracies, maybe right
16:40tape, I don't know.
16:42And is it a kind of dead end and we have to accept that the world will happen without us
16:52and we will be a kind of, let's say, Disneyland or something like this.
16:59Tourist will come and visit our castles and the whole staff and museum.
17:05Or can we wake up Europe and change the way we are operating?
17:14We can't give up.
17:16And I think what Nick said is correct.
17:20The names that Nick presented, we all have to help him.
17:28And the reason why we have to do so, I share with you an episode, an experience I had some
17:39weeks ago.
17:40Because what Nick said is a question of power, influence.
17:48And I would like to, just to share with you this episode, I was in a debate in the US,
17:56in Washington DC, I was chairing a panel, the title of the panel was Can Europe scale question mark?
18:05Three panelists, European, Americans.
18:08And I asked them, please, first round of answers, yes or no, then second round with deep dive.
18:18First, panelists start saying that I don't know what to answer.
18:24I will ask AI and I will read the answer of AI to the question, can Europe scale question mark?
18:31And he reads, can Europe scale question mark?
18:34No, because Europe has two reports saying what is necessary to do, but the fragmentation of the political powers in
18:44the different countries, the inertia and so on, will create obstacles.
18:49So the answer is no.
18:50So I asked him, please tell us which AI is this one.
18:55And of course he said, it's an American AI.
18:57I don't want to name it.
19:00An American AI.
19:01In the room, there was a European leader raising his hand and asking the floor.
19:08I gave him the floor and he said, I asked another AI the same question.
19:15Can Europe scale?
19:17And this other AI that was European, you can imagine which one.
19:24The answer is, can Europe scale question mark?
19:28Yes, Europe can scale because of ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta.
19:32And what is impressive, negatively impressive for me is the fact that the entire European audience in that room, and
19:43I'm sure everywhere, is using the American AI and not the European one.
19:49So is influenced by answers that are based on data that are a bias, by definition.
19:59And I conclude the story because I was two weeks ago in Fudan University, having an agreement with my university,
20:09AI University Madrid.
20:11So we signed an agreement in Fudan, so Shanghai, and in a debate, a lot of people, I tell the
20:18audience this story.
20:21And a very smart Fudan scholar, I say, can I read a deep-seek answer to the same question?
20:31And he reads, can Europe scale, question mark?
20:36Yes, Europe can scale.
20:38And the answer was the same of the European one.
20:40So it is a question of power.
20:43So for me, the need to have the 28 regime, the 28 regime is the idea to have a 28
20:51virtual state in Europe with its own corporate law for startups, companies.
20:56The Commission accepted this idea that was in my report, the Commission changed the name, because the Commission said there
21:04will be one day a 28 member state in Iceland or Montenegro.
21:08So there was, yes, but there will be again one, maybe not the UK, but another 28 will be there.
21:17So they named it EU-INC, U-I-N-C, you can find it.
21:23And now is under the discussion of Parliament and Council.
21:26It's a very good idea to overcome, of course I'm biased, but it's a good idea to overcome red tape.
21:34I'm biased because it's your recommendation.
21:35But because of red tape and because of fragmentation.
21:39What Nick said about 17 regional authorities and legislations on data protection is totally in just one country and all
21:52the others having different.
21:53So it is clear that someone from abroad needs to have a very simplified system, but also for you, if
22:01you are a startup, if you want to grow up to scale, you need to have a system that can
22:08help you, first of all, in bureaucratic terms, to help you then giving you the money and giving you all
22:16the possibilities.
22:16In a nutshell, Maurice, I think we have to consider that if we are not able to do so in
22:23these topics, the big discussion in the VivaTech of 2032, and you will share a big panel in which we
22:34will discuss if we want to become a colony of the US or a colony of China, but that will
22:42be the topic.
22:43And frankly speaking, I want to be European, Italian, and European.
22:55You have the answer of the room.
22:59Can you explain, Enrico, you keep the microphone open, and can you explain what you mean by Europe needs a
23:11fifth freedom?
23:13When the single market was created…
23:16When the single market was created…
23:16Because after the 28th country, you want a fifth freedom.
23:20When the single market was created, 92, as you said, the single market was created with the so-called four
23:27freedoms.
23:28The freedom of movement of goods, services, capitals, and people.
23:33And by the way, the single market was created because he had two engines.
23:38The commission, Jacques Delors, I'm a great fan of Jacques Delors, I'm president of the Jacques Delors Institute.
23:47Jacques Delors was the great creator of the single market.
23:51And the UK.
23:52The UK has always been the big push.
23:55And by the way, it's for me also the sense of the reason why we have to love good politics.
24:01Because the two protagonists of the single market in Europe in the 80s were Jacques Delors and Margaret Thatcher.
24:09Can you imagine two people more different to each other than Delors and Thatcher?
24:14Totally different.
24:15But they were cooperating.
24:17And the single market was this for freedom.
24:21So freedom of movement of goods, services, capitals, and people.
24:27Erasmus is the ultimate realization, achievement of the single market for people, of course.
24:37Ryanair.
24:38Ryanair is because of the single market.
24:40I say Ryanair, I could say EasyJet and whatever.
24:45Is the ultimate achievement of the single market.
24:50Services.
24:51So the possibility to bring people from one country to another without being la compagnie nationale.
25:02So if you give a look, the four, goods, services, capitals, and people, we miss something fundamental.
25:10We miss the intangible.
25:13We miss innovation, knowledge, skills.
25:16So the big point today is to add a fifth freedom, innovation, skills, research, knowledge, the union of skills.
25:25The possibility to have free circulation of that.
25:29That is fundamental.
25:30And may I say, for instance, Nick, this fifth freedom can be a bridge to restart cooperating European Union and
25:38the UK.
25:39We started last year on defense, but I think we can do more than just work together on defense.
25:47It's interesting because in 2006, Thierry Breton was Minister of Finance and he asked me to write a report of
26:01the intangible economy.
26:03And part of this intangible economy, when we discovered obviously what it was and all the things that we can
26:11generate and the new jobs and the revenue and GDP that we could generate, there was an idea which is,
26:20okay, good for France.
26:22But if we have to do it at the right scale, we should do it at the scale of Europe.
26:29And 20 years later, we are still where we are.
26:35Nick, I would like to come back to what you said about AI.
26:39When you look at all the industrial changes that happened in the last century or the last two centuries, they
26:53have all benefited to the US without any exception.
26:58You can speak about computer, you can speak about aviation, the steam industry, the electricity, the phone, whatever has been
27:08created, including something which has been created in Europe.
27:15And we had on stage Tim Berners-Lee, Sir Tim, who has been part of the creation of the internet.
27:26It, at the end of the day, benefited more to the US than any other country.
27:34Why AI should be different?
27:38Well, so far it isn't.
27:40You know, because as I explained earlier, the technology, the base technology is so capital intensive.
27:50And because the actual process of this predictive, probabilistic, generative AI is a sort of cumbersome.
28:01I mean, that's the interesting thing about this technology.
28:03We marvel at the technology.
28:05It's a very cumbersome technology.
28:06You know, if you go on to any of the AI chatbots and ask how do I get to a
28:12local metro station, I'm exaggerating slightly for effect.
28:16But under the current paradigm, it basically boils the ocean to give you the answer.
28:21Because it has to sort of literally scour all the repository of data that it's got and all the billions
28:26of parameters that are applied to it to spit out this, to generate this probabilistic answer.
28:31And so it doesn't surprise me at all that the world in which we inhabit now, with a few exceptions,
28:37is as dominated as it is by foundation models built by developers in China and the US.
28:45Yes.
28:45I think the question for us is, firstly, if we're not really in the race of building the base models,
28:55are we going to be better than other parts of the world in deploying AI in the workplace, in schools,
29:03in healthcare settings in order to derive the productivity benefits?
29:08There's no golden rule that says the place that invents a technology is also the place that benefits from the
29:15deployment of that technology.
29:17For all of those of you who either live in America or visit there, you know, you'll know that for
29:25most Europeans, for instance, the experience of using US retail banks is like going back to the 1970s.
29:31I remember when I moved my family to Silicon Valley in the autumn of 2018 and I was issued with
29:37a checkbook.
29:38I had to literally write by hand, you know, this kind of stuff.
29:41So, you know, there are consumer experiences where we've actually been in Europe way ahead of the US, even though
29:47their industry might be much more mature and competitive and larger size and so on.
29:51So, I think deployment, how you deploy AI, which is difficult candidly or it's difficult politically at a time when
30:00you have all these technologists in Silicon Valley scaring the living daylights out of people.
30:04I still, when the history books are written about this period of time, I think people will marvel at the
30:10eccentricity, to put it mildly, of people like Musk and Altman and Derry Amodei who keep telling people, I'm working
30:18on this technology and it's going to eliminate humanity as we know it.
30:22It's going to destroy all jobs.
30:23I mean, there's almost a guarantee that people then don't want to adopt the technology and certainly a guarantee of
30:29a societal backlash, which clearly is brewing now.
30:32So, the seeds of a sort of pitchfork rebellion against AI is being sown right now.
30:39And you can see it, of course, most visibly in the United States, where the local objections to the construction
30:44of data centers is becoming a major, major problem.
30:47It's not surprising.
30:48If you tell people you're going to destroy their way of life and take their jobs away, they don't want
30:52to build that infrastructure, which is going to do that to them and their families, in your neck of the
30:56woods.
30:57So, I think deployment is difficult to argue for when you've got quite understandable societal reluctance, but I think it's
31:06terrifically important.
31:07And then the second point is really just a repetition of what I said earlier.
31:11I think, as Europeans, we need to think, what is the next wave of...
31:14So, I'll give you an example, which you and I have talked about before, Maurice.
31:18When I was working in Silicon Valley at Meta, I was involved, as many people were, in this partnership that
31:24Meta has forged with a European company, Exor Luxottica, who make the Franco-Taline company, which make spectacles and Ray
31:34-Bans and all the rest of it.
31:35And they've really been the leaders of the hardware around these smart glasses, which, of course, is now being imitated
31:42by a number of other American and Chinese companies.
31:46I don't know what the plans are for Exor Luxottica, but in theory, Exor Luxottica could become the sort of
31:52Samsung of wearables.
31:54And I really hope they're going to be as ambitious as that.
31:57You know, it's a hell of a first-mover advantage to be the leading hardware provider of a totally new
32:06class of platform technology, which I think we can excel in.
32:10So, again, we need to constantly anticipate where is the puck going and how can we make sure that we
32:16don't end up in the back seat, as we are on LLMs, and we end up in at least the
32:20front passenger seat and ideally behind the wheel for the next generation of technologies which are going to come about
32:27in the next few years.
32:29Enrico, I would like to come back to one of the things that you have mentioned regarding the transformation of
32:37Europe, the 20th country or the 20th virtual country.
32:43You have met almost every single Prime Minister or President of Europe.
32:52Probably all.
32:55From my point of view, when I'm thinking about them, with very little exception, they are all intelligent.
33:04They are all conscious of the situation.
33:07They understand exactly what the challenges are for Europe.
33:14What is holding them back?
33:17Why they are not making the decision that many CEOs had to make to transform their company?
33:27Because they knew that if they were not going to transform, as you mentioned for Luxottica, they will die.
33:36And they are looking at Europe with all the challenges, all the difficulties, and they are still waiting.
33:46Take one example.
33:47Take one example.
33:48We have just that discussion which failed recently on the Franco-German, yes, SCAF, which is a SCAF F for
34:05failure.
34:08So, what is happening?
34:11Why those intelligent people, very clever, who have been tough enough to get to the top, are not able to
34:25make the right decision for Europe?
34:27Well, the reason is very simple.
34:31And I start by saying that something is happening today to overcome this inertia and this fragmentation.
34:38Because in the last four months, the European Council, the leaders and the European Commission agreed with the Parliament on
34:48a plan.
34:49The name of the plan is One Europe, One Market, with 42 measures, part of what Henna Verkunen just said
34:5910 minutes ago, is part of this One Europe, One Market.
35:0342 measures with deadlines, binding deadlines, Q3 26, Q2 27.
35:13Some of these measures, one of them is the EU Inc., is the 28th regime.
35:19Another one is the Industrial Accelerator Act, the public procurement single market.
35:26These measures are the possibility to recuperate 25 years in which we didn't integrate and we didn't complete the single
35:35market.
35:37I think we have all to thank Donald Trump for that, because Donald Trump's pressure or badwill or goodwill, you
35:50name it, to cut the relationship with Europe was a sort of wake-up call for us, Europeans, to say,
35:58hey people, we are alone in this world, so we have to be independent.
36:03We were not independent, now we have to become independent.
36:07And we have to start creating our own single market on tech, on energy, on financial markets and so on.
36:15And this is what is happening, and I can tell you that the true turning moment was the crisis for
36:27Greenland.
36:29End of January, beginning of February, you remember very well.
36:33These days were days in which the Prime Minister said, hey people, we have to be independent, it's impossible to
36:41continue like that.
36:42The level of threat in this moment was so evident.
36:47But you are right to say, but why are they not so, I would say, fast and determined.
36:56They are.
36:57The key problem is the fact that our mindsets are all national, national in Europe.
37:04Because we are all thinking, when one government has to think about AI, which is the first reaction or the
37:14first instinct, we prepare a national plan on AI.
37:18We put money on this national plan on AI, we go to the media, to the national media, and we
37:25say, we will have our AI project putting 3 billion euros, 4 billion euros, 10 billion euros.
37:35That is enormous, that is enormous for one country.
37:37But in comparison with the magnitude, you said, 1 trillion euros is peanuts, if it is done at national level.
37:47Because we think that our public opinions, they want to have the national flag.
37:52The same on satellites.
37:54Last year, the US sent, launched 170 satellites.
38:04The Chinese, 69 satellites.
38:07With Europeans, five.
38:10Five.
38:10Why?
38:12Because we have…
38:13But more clever.
38:14Yeah, more clever.
38:15Yes, but…
38:16Très sympathique, but five.
38:19Why?
38:20Because at the end of the day, the instinct of each country is, I am interested if the satellites have
38:28the national flag of my country, if there is an astronaut of my country, and I can explain to my
38:35public opinion that we are going to the moon at national level.
38:39And this is the problem.
38:41And what I am trying to say, what I try to say with my report, was to take the example
38:48of the euro.
38:49And for me, the example of the euro is the most telling and the most effective example.
38:54Why I say the euro?
38:56Very simple reason.
38:57The euro was complicated to digest.
38:59In France, you had a referendum, Maurice.
39:01You remember, 51 to 49, the referendum.
39:0649% of the French people were against the euro.
39:09In Italy, it was so complicated to digest the euro in Germany.
39:14So complicated.
39:14Because people were thinking we leave our national currency in France.
39:22Le franc français en France.
39:25Its identity.
39:27It's so fortunate that we moved to a euro based on the current situation.
39:32You see.
39:32Because I don't want to imagine what would have happened to the francs français.
39:36Exactly.
39:37You know that today, 80, 0% of the French people, of the Italian people, of the German people, they
39:46don't want to come back to the national currency that we had before.
39:4980%.
39:50We know it's a success.
39:52My question is also to the national sovereignist.
39:57Do you think that we lost our identity because we have the euro?
40:03No.
40:04We have the euro.
40:05It works.
40:06I am Italian.
40:08You are French.
40:09We are Europeans.
40:11We have the same currency.
40:13It works.
40:13We have our national identities and our European shared identity.
40:18It is a success.
40:21And the same we have to do with the rest.
40:25With the financial markets.
40:26With the connectivity.
40:28There is no national identity obliging us to be national on that.
40:32If we are national, we are ineffective.
40:35If we are only national, we are sending gifts to the Americans and to the Chinese.
40:42If we are Europeans, we share sovereignty and we share scale and growth.
40:46And we can do something together, very important, with the UK too.
40:50So, at the end of the day, this is the key issue.
40:53And I repeat, because I want to end up with a positive note.
40:58Something is happening.
40:59In the last four months, this project, One Europe, One Market, and the first realizations
41:05are there.
41:07They put Q4, Q426 to get the agreement on the 28 regime.
41:15So, next year, when we will be here, at VivaTech next year.
41:22You are invited.
41:23Both of you.
41:24We will check if this binding deadline has been respected by the leaders.
41:29In my experience, I don't know what Nick thinks on that.
41:34You have leadership and commitment at the level of prime ministers.
41:39When you go down and you enter in the sectoral council of ministers, you have all the red lines starting.
41:51So, this is why when I met the prime ministers in the different meetings with Draghi, we were both at
41:58the European Council in February,
42:02and we said to the prime ministers, you have to lead this process.
42:07Do not delegate to your ministers or ambassadors.
42:13If you leave to your ambassadors, your ambassadors will raise the walls.
42:18Why?
42:19Because they are there to protect the national environment.
42:24And the main problem is that the national environment is exactly there to create a problem to have the possibility
42:31to share.
42:31The Euro was created because of the leadership of five people in Europe.
42:37And this leadership of five people, I think these five people, we have to thank them.
42:41Because today we have the Euro.
42:42And the Euro is our shield.
42:44And we have to do the same also in the rest.
42:48To close, I would like to ask each of you what should be the single most important aspect on which
42:59Europe will have,
43:01to invest and separate itself from the world.
43:06Is it about, you know, investing in innovation, competitiveness, sovereignty, or just try to generate growth at any price?
43:22Bearing in mind that you mentioned, Nick, the AI at the beginning of the conversation, that today there is someone
43:35who can decide that AI is accessible to European companies or not, as you have seen recently with Centropic.
43:44So what should we be doing?
43:49What should we be selecting and investing and making it top of mind and top of actions?
43:57Nick?
43:58Including with the idea that maybe we can have a better collaboration with UK.
44:04Because personally, I feel very bad about the fact that UK is no longer part of the continent.
44:12Well, yes to all the above.
44:14But I think the thing, it might sound mundane.
44:18And I think that's actually part of the problem.
44:20I think for too many decision makers in Brussels and the capitals, the most important thing has also been the
44:27most unglamorous thing.
44:29And that's simply completing the digital single market, which does not exist.
44:34And this is why what Enrico has done, what Mario Draghi has done is so important.
44:39They've reminded people it's the hard, unglamorous work, the regulatory and the tariff and the non-tariff barriers, which create
44:47a marketplace of scale which we don't have.
44:50And I think we need to be blunt.
44:51But the digital single market does not currently exist, which is why Enrico's Fifth Freedom and other ideas like it
44:58are so important.
44:59So I would prioritize it beyond everything else, getting that homework done.
45:04If we can create a genuinely seamless market of 500 million plus consumers in the digital sphere, just as we
45:11have tried in previous decades in goods and in services and movement to people and so on.
45:17Then I think we have the chance of taking this wellspring of entrepreneurship, which does exist in Europe, including a
45:24fantastic science base, enormous amount of innovation and so on.
45:28And instead of seeing this flywheel of European entrepreneurs, the moment they need to raise 30, 40, 50 million euros
45:36rather than 1, 2, 3 million euros.
45:38At the moment, far too many of them go to Sand Hill Road, go to Palo Alto, because that's where
45:42they can find that capital.
45:43And before you know it, we've created inventions here and they've gone to the other side of the Atlantic.
45:48The way to stop that more than anything else is giving them a market here, which has the same hemispheric
45:54scale as the Chinese and the American markets.
45:59Enrico?
45:59If I have to choose one, I choose EU Inc.
46:03I choose the 28th regime.
46:05And I would like to convince you to be part of this campaign, to convince prime ministers, government, members of
46:15the European Parliament.
46:16You know members of the European Parliament.
46:19You have to push them to be fast in this decision.
46:22Why?
46:23For a very simple reason.
46:25The EU Inc., this 28th regime, will allow you to create a European company.
46:34To create a European startup.
46:37Why?
46:38Because today, if you want to create a company in Europe, you have to create a French company, an Italian
46:45company, a German company, a Lithuanian company, a Portuguese company.
46:50And if you create a national company, you are immediately with a ceiling.
46:58And the ceiling is not put by the Chinese or the Americans.
47:02It's put by your neighboring country.
47:04I give you two examples, because I want to be very frank.
47:10Savings and banking.
47:12There are today, there were in the last years, and today, big discussion about mergers in Europe.
47:20A Franco-Italian merger on savings.
47:24That was last year's discussion.
47:26Then, on the two sides, we can't give our savings to the French.
47:34We can't give our savings to the Italians.
47:37Can you imagine?
47:39Today, on banks, there's a merger between an Italian and a German bank.
47:45That is, we can't accept that the Italians take a German bank.
47:52If you start with a European company, you end up with all these stories.
48:00That are the typical European stories.
48:02Our legacies.
48:03You know that we have difficulties to have even a European railway system because of our past.
48:13If you go to Bayonne, Saint-Jean-de-la-Luz and Saint-Ander, you have to stop at the border.
48:20And you have to move and to change trains at the border.
48:25Why?
48:26Because the railways, to avoid invasions from one country to another, the dimension of the railway is different.
48:35Because of history.
48:36And so you have to stop and to change.
48:38So, can you imagine to have, like in China, for instance, a system of high-speed railways connecting all the
48:47capitals.
48:48But to connect the capitals in Europe, you need to, I would say, to stop with all these legacies.
48:55And the same in your work.
48:57You have to create a European company.
48:59If you create a European company, no problem of legacies, no problem of borders.
49:04And you will be able to scale up.
49:07That is the most important point.
49:09So, but this is the key moment.
49:12In this year and next year, here in June, Maurice, we will check if it is true or not.
49:19Before, just we close, one final word.
49:24There was a French expression which says politicien un jour, politicien toujours.
49:30Which means that when I'm listening to both of you, it looks like you are still in the politics and
49:40completely embedded in.
49:42And my question is, is politics missing you? Are you missing politics?
49:49I'm not missing politics, no.
49:52Enrico?
49:53But in reality, we are doing politics because we are discussing about things that are politics.
50:00We are not in parliament. We are not in government. We are citizens.
50:04But we are doing politics and this is what you have to do also.
50:08You see, the Italians are more subtle.
50:13Merci.
50:16Merci, formidable.
50:18Merci beaucoup.
50:34Prime Minister Modi at about 2 p.m. making an address.
50:40You will have the visit of President Macron.
50:45And I will have a conversation with Shantanu Narayan, the chairman and CEO of Adobe.
50:56And plenty of other things. So, see you tomorrow. Thank you.
Comments