The narriative that #Europe is "falling behind" has become increasingly popular among its detractors, usually calling for deregulation, or trying to label Europe as a failed leftist project.
While Europe does face some challenges, what they are saying couldn't be further from the truth, so in this thread, let's discuss why Europe isn't falling behind 🧵 ⬇️
First let's talk projects! The EU's Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) has expanded enormously over the last decade, and is nearing completion: Europe has about 11 000km of high speed rail, with a target of 25 000 - 30 000 by 2040.
Among the ongoing works is the Brenner Base Tunnel, a 55km rail link under the Alps. When completed it will be the longest underground railway connection in the world, and connect Northern and Southern Europe. ⬇️
Europe's ambition extends into space, with its Galileo and Copernicus satellite programmes.
The former is Europe's answer to GPS, with higher accuracy and global coverage. Over the last 2 decades, Europe has built up this network and now has 30 satellites in orbit.
The latter is a network of seven earth observation satellites, with more planned, which provide free, open data about our climate and land.
Europe is also planning a third programme for Internet and Communications satellites.
Back down on Earth, Europe has also seen the drastic acceleration of deployment of Fibre and 5G networks, going from 0% to 85% 5g coverage in 10 years, and 20% to 60% fibre coverage. We have kept pace with the US despite having a drastically more fragmented telecoms landscape, all while keeping consumer bills comparitively lower.
We've also been greening our energy mix, with the share of renewables soaring from 29% in 2016 to over 50% in 2025. Including nuclear, this means 75% of Europe's electricity is Carbon-free.
An emphasis on energy-efficient appliances, expanding interconnectors, and building new wind farms is also helping move the EU away from dependency on foreign fossil fuels far faster than the US.
Pictured, a proposed wind farm in the North sea, set to generate power for over 100 million homes. ⬇️
Europe is also leading globally in decarbonisation of industry, with a focus on some of the most polluting processes: Steel-making and Concrete production.
Europe is home to the first carbon-free Steel and Cement plants, and while production is still small, it exceeds that of other countries, and is growing!
Europeans also lead the way when it comes to recycling and reducing plastic pollution: Europeans recycle 60% of general waste, an increase of 20% since 2010.
Recent bans on single-use plastics and microplastics in cosmetics and detergents are also helping to reduce microplastic pollution.
Additionally, our pesticide use is down 15% over the last decade, without impacting productivity, while reforestation has increased forest cover by 84502km²! ⬇️
Speaking of forests, they are among a pleathora of environments protected in the Natura network, which has grown from 750M hectares in 2010, to over 1 billion hectares in 2026, helping to slow pollinator and bird population decline and wetland loss, and to increase water qualtiy.
We've also learned these changes reduce our exposure to climate change, in particular flooding. More work is needed but research done since 2010 will increase pace and effectiveness of restoration in the 2020s.
@jmaris A few things on the top of my head to fuel the thread: - The German company BioNTech made the first mRNA vaccine for Covid-19. - The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk found that their world-leading drug for diabetes, Ozempic, was very efficient for weight loss in 2022, saving many American lives (because we all know they are the ones needing it). In 2025, they also sold it in tablet form, making it the first GLP-1 drug that doesn't need an injection. - A bit older than 10 years, but CERN confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson is 2012, a crucial element to many physics theories. This year, they were able to transport antimatter (that they manufacture) in a truck. Yes, the thing that disappears when it comes in contact with anything. - The Dutch ASML managed multiple breakthrough on computer chip lithography that are powering the world's computers (ASML creates the machines TSMC and other chip manufacturers use to create the chips). Just this year, they had a breakthrough on EUV that will increase semiconductor throughput by 50%. - In the quantum computing realm, there are plenty of European leaders: the French Pasqal and Quandela, the Austrian AQT and the Finnish IQM, among others, provide their technologies to services like Amazon Braket or (if we want to stay in Europe) Scaleway Qiskit. - For AI, since that's what most tech bros with those arguments are interested about, the French Mistral provides open-weight models that are on par with other open-weight models (when they are released, they don't release new models very frequently compared to the Big 3, that have 10x more employees at least). All that while being the only ChatGPT competitor that has a decent privacy policy that I know of, thanks to the fact that they respect GDPR (yes, that isn't incompatible with innovation)
@Varpie@jmaris on COVID-19 vaccines and Ozempic: it is true that the research and discovery happened in EU soil, however (and that's the issue EU successful start-ups face) the capital investment required for the industrialization and commercialisation process was USian. We successfully invest in R&D, but we fail at scaling when start-ups need to become corporations.
@s1m0n4@jmaris The Covid 19 vaccine was a collaboration with Pfizer, mostly for clinical trials and the huge need of global distribution (it was a global pandemic after all), but Ozempic was mostly funded by Denmark until it became popular in the US. Clinical trials there were funded by Novo. And since they are the biggest consumers of it, doesn't it make sense for them to invest in it more?
Population of the EU: 450,380,320 Population of the USA: 341,784,857
Why do big capitals and global distribution happen in the USA? What do we lack?
If we take Ozempic as a use case, there are enough obese patients in the EU too. However the US allows anyone to take the drug, even overweight individuals, whereas here it must be prescribed by doctors.
Medical considerations aside, from a potential investor perspective, the (lack of) regulation makes the USA more attractive.
@s1m0n4@Varpie@jmaris we lack concentration of capital in fewer hands (gini around 42 in 2023 vs around 30 on EU countries). Which in my books is a win on these cases. We are able to fund what matters to people despite that.
@Lluis_Revilla@Varpie@jmaris except when it comes to emergencies like COVID-19. We weren't able to mass produce the vaccine before the USA, despite having developed the vaccine in the EU.
I am not saying we are applying the wrong model, I only wish to understand if there is a way to retain successful businesses in our continent when they reach a certain size.
@s1m0n4@Lluis_Revilla@jmaris The Covid 19 pandemic is not representative of organic growth for a company. And it's not like companies are just moving away to the US either. There are plenty of success stories in the EU, that are just not as mediatized as the US ones, and detractors that want less strict policies are pushing a wrong narrative of "it's impossible to have a successful business in Europe". You don't need a trillion dollar company to have a successful business.
1
