A Critical Intervention Framework Proposal
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Europe stands 36 months from irreversible technological vassalage and geopolitical insignificance.
While European politicians debate regulatory frameworks and undermine sustainable governance, China and America are carving up the digital and industrial future—and Europe is not at the table.
This document presents irrefutable evidence of Europe’s catastrophic competitive decline and outlines the only viable intervention capable of reversing this trajectory.
The Bondo Foundation’s disruption analysis reveals the path towards, and the design of an intervention framework that can change the course of Europe’s technological decline. We show that without immediate, coordinated action at unprecedented scale, Europe faces economic subordination that will define the continent’s fate for generations.
Bondo Foundation has developed and tested an intervention framework that will change the course of Europe’s technological decline.
Our ambitious plan and systemic approach will unlock unprecedented efficiencies across the entire innovation ecosystem and radically improve the efficacy of capital allocation throughout the whole investment value chain, from source capital to real economic growth.
In addition to acting on these critical vectors, Bondo Foundation’s Framework also creates an enormous pool of virtual capital* which, in turn, will catalyse a series of urgent step changes that will positively and definitively correct Europe’s trajectory.
The intervention we propose requires a coalition of key institutions at national and supra-national level, and hitherto unprecedented coordination between them.
We see light at the end of the tunnel however we’re also not confused: Europe’s ability to reclaim agency over its destiny hinges on the mobilisation and commitment of parties that are ready, willing and able to build a new paradigm.
Technology and innovation gaps are severe and widening. While Europe maintains some competitive advantages in specific areas like manufacturing equipment (ASML’s EUV lithography monopoly), it lags substantially behind in critical sectors (Exhibit 1). The USA controls 73% of large language model development and received $10.8 billion more in AI investment than the EU between 2018-20202. China dominates clean technology manufacturing with 70% of global solar panels and leads in 57 of 64 critical technologies according to ASPI analysis. China has a similar dominant position in energy storage systems.
Economic competitiveness metrics show alarming divergence. The USA’s GDP is now 42% higher than the EU’s, up from 23% in 20084. European productivity growth remains stuck at 1.5% annually while US productivity continues outpacing Europe. Most critically, Europe suffers from a substantive venture capital deficit – receiving only 0.3% of GDP in VC funding compared to over 1% in the USA. This funding gap has persisted for over a decade, with startups and scale-ups in the USA receiving $ 800B more in VC investment than in Europe over the past ten years.
Industrial capacity reveals concerning dependencies. China accounts for 31.6% of global manufacturing output compared to Europe’s fragmented production. Europe depends 100% on China for heavy rare earth elements and imports over 80% of its digital products and services. The EU’s manufacturing output remains 9% below pre-pandemic levels in mid-tech sectors, while China expanded its economy by 20% during the same period.
Venture Capital is wasting up to 90% of its resources. Bondo Foundation research has shown that, across the board, venture capital and private equity investors in the startup and innovation ecosystem, are poor decision makers. Out of a total of 408 unicorns created in Europe over a span of several decades, 72% of investors* only invested in 1 unicorn, and another 20% invested in 2 unicorns out of 408, indicating a very poor ability to identify investment opportunities with strong potential, both early on and at later stages (Exhibit 2).
* A total of around 2050 investors, comprising Venture Capital funds, Private Equity funds, Hedge Funds, Investment Banks, Family Offices, High Net Worth Individuals, Business Angels, Government Agencies & Investment Entities, EIC, Pension Funds, Accelerators
Digital infrastructure deployment lags significantly. China holds 41.8% of global 5G infrastructure market share14, while at the same time, European deployment remains fragmented across member states. Europe has minimal presence in the global platform economy, with only 11% of worldwide unicorn companies and virtually no representation among the top 20 internet companies globally with exception of Booking.com15.
In summary, Europe is significantly and persistently lagging the United States and China in the development of key technologies. Europe lags the United States by 44% in all key technology areas combined (AI, Semi-conductors, Biotech, Space and Quantum computing) and lists squarely below China (Critical and Emerging Technologies Index)16. This means that extraordinary efforts are required to keep up with China and the United States, let alone to close the gap to a certain degree. Business as usual and incremental improvements and measures will certainly result in furthering the gap between Europe on the one hand and the United States and China on the other hand.
Current EU initiatives show mixed effectiveness. The European Chips Act, while promising, allocated only €15 billion20 compared to the USA’s $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act21. National efforts to attract semiconductor manufacturing initiatives are hampered by EU regulations22 and competition between member states. The European Green Deal faces implementation challenges and focus issues23 with only 32 of 154 targets currently “on track” and 64 requiring “acceleration needed.”24 The Recovery and Resilience Facility has disbursed €225 billion but faces quality concerns and absorption difficulties25.
Governance structures hinder rapid response. Complex multi-level governance prevents the coordinated action needed to compete with USA and Chinese models. The proposed European Sovereignty Fund was reduced from €10 billion to €1.5 billion, highlighting limited member state appetite for EU-level industrial policy26. Current approaches rely heavily on reshuffling existing funds rather than mobilising new resources at the scale required.
Strategic coherence remains elusive. The EU continues to operate primarily as a regulatory power rather than a strategic economic actor27. Expert assessments from Bruegel, Carnegie Europe, and CEPS converge on the same conclusion: Europe needs fundamental institutional and financial reforms to move beyond reactive policies toward genuine strategic autonomy.
The emergence and adoption of major innovations has been accelerating over the last 200 years and has now reached a point where innovations can disrupt existing ecosystems with a very short period of time (Exhibit 3). With the emergence of AI and the ubiquity of networked infrastructure and devices, it is extremely likely that disruptive developments will continue to be the norm in society and the economy.
In case Europe takes leadership in accelerating the innovation ecosystem, it seems logical for the European Commission to also spearhead a country coalition to strengthen this coalition’s competitiveness and strategic sovereignty.
Venture capital investment activity in successful countries is large and is highly concentrated (Exhibit 4). A high concentration translates into competition between investors, and competition, in turn, translates into excellence. The European venture capital activity is both small and very dispersed because of Europe’s fragmentation (Exhibit 5).
The European VC mindset differs markedly from its American counterpart, focusing predominantly on risk mitigation rather than growth potential. Where American investors ask “how big can this get and what can we do to accelerate that growth?”, European VCs typically begin with “what could go wrong?” This risk-averse approach stems largely from Europe’s fragmented market structure, which limits the scale potential that drives more aggressive investment strategies.
This fragmentation creates a strategic disadvantage: whilst European VCs remain cautious, more ambitious foreign investors—particularly from the USA—recognise and exploit the resulting opportunities. Our research demonstrates how this conservative approach has inadvertently opened the door for overseas capital to capture value that European investors have been reluctant to pursue.
The fundamental issue isn’t just cultural—it’s structural. Europe’s patchwork of markets, regulations, and consumer behaviours makes it genuinely harder to achieve the exponential scaling that venture capital demands. However, this same complexity creates arbitrage opportunities for investors willing to navigate it, explaining why foreign capital increasingly views European reluctance as their competitive advantage.
The Draghi Report marks a watershed moment. Mario Draghi’s September 2024 competitiveness report provides the most comprehensive diagnosis of Europe’s challenges, calling for investment equivalent to 4-5% of EU GDP annually28. The Commission’s January 2025 “Competitiveness Compass” builds on this analysis but offers more fiscally conservative proposals than the crisis demands29. The Commission also proposed a paltry €1.5 billion European Sovereignty Fund, reduced from an already inadequate €10 billion proposal.
The Draghi and Letta Reports highlight many focus areas. As happened with the UN SDGs, having too many concurrent objectives will effectively achieve very little30. Razor sharp focus is therefore of the utmost importance.
We can extract three main focus areas from the Draghi and Letta Reports:
European leadership shows growing urgency. Emmanuel Macron’s warnings that the European model risks being “killed off” by US-China rivalry reflect growing recognition of existential challenges31. Ursula von der Leyen’s prioritisation of competitiveness as the Commission’s “first priority” signals institutional awareness, though implementation remains inadequate32.
Business confidence continues to decline. European Round Table CEO confidence dropped from 53 to 42 out of 100, with 61% seeing European economic performance worsening. BusinessEurope reports that 85% of members expect US deregulation to divert investment from Europe, highlighting the urgency of competitive responses33.
Our research (Exhibit 6) shows that, unless significant and bold measures are implemented across Europe within the next three years, Europe will change very significantly and for a long period of time.
Europe will become a diminished continent, and will more resembles Latin America than the global power it once was.
The technology and wealth gap between Europe and the USA will become such that it will be impossible to catch up, or even follow in the footsteps.
The socio-economic, cultural and political scenarios are described separately in Annex to this document.
This future is not far ahead of us, it is developing as we contemplate what should be done.
The tragedy is that this decline is entirely avoidable with decisive action today. But current trajectories point unmistakably toward irrelevance. The choice facing European leaders is stark: transform now or accept managed decline into geopolitical insignificance, effectively making the European Union redundant.
The window for preventing this scenario is perhaps 36 months. After that, demographic trends, technology gaps, and political fragmentation make decline irreversible, regardless of policy efforts.
Europe’s innovation ecosystem is haemorrhaging value. While venture capitalists waste 90% of their resources through poor decision-making, and European startups struggle with fragmented support systems, America and China are building the next generation of global technology giants. The solution is not another policy paper or regulatory framework—it’s a complete digital transformation of how Europe identifies, resources, and scales its future unicorns.
Bondo Foundation has developed the Shared Innovation Operating System—a comprehensive digital infrastructure that will revolutionise how Europe creates and captures innovation value. This is not an incremental improvement. This is Europe’s D-Day for technological sovereignty (Exhibit 7 – see below).
The Core Mission: 1000+ European Unicorns
The Operating System has one primary objective: identify and accelerate the next 1000+ European unicorns while ensuring European ownership and wealth creation remain on the continent. Current venture capital failure rates of up to 90% become obsolete when every actor in the ecosystem operates with real-time data, AI-powered matching, and validated intelligence.
Through the Digital Operating System, Europe will:
Virtual Capital: The 5-10x Multiplier Effect
The Operating System doesn’t just organise resources—it creates virtual capital: additional value generated through digital innovation acceleration, which reduces barriers to entry, accelerates investment flows and company formation, and enhances overall market efficiencies.
Exhibit 8 demonstrates how Europe can match America’s venture capital advantage not by spending more, but by spending smarter. Through ecosystem acceleration, resource efficiency, and the elimination of friction, every euro invested generates 5-10 euros of effective value.
1. Immediate Implementation: The D-Day Approach
This is not a 10-year plan. Implementation begins immediately with military precision:
2. Securing ecosystem support by mobilising Talent and organisations through the Innovation Operating System
3. Supporting Infrastructure: Fix the Basics
While the Innovation Operating System drives innovation, three supporting reforms must proceed in parallel:
The Bottom Line: Act Now or Become Irrelevant
The Operating System exists. The technology is ready. The framework is proven. Every day of delay means more European innovations captured by American and Chinese platforms, more talent exodus, more wealth transfer.
Our research and simulations suggest a historically unprecedented Benefit Cost Ratio36 for very large interventions of over 1000.
Europe has 36 months to implement this system or accept permanent technological vassalage.
The choice is binary: Build Europe’s Unicorn Factory or become the world’s most elegant museum.
The Choice That Will Define Europe’s Future
Europe faces an existential crisis that dwarfs even climate change in its immediacy and tangible impact on citizens’ lives.
The stakes could not be clearer: without immediate intervention, Europe ceases to exist as a geopolitically relevant entity. The European Union and Commission themselves become redundant institutions managing the world’s largest open air museum rather than shaping the future of 450 million citizens. Yet unlike climate change, where outcomes remain uncertain despite massive investments, the solution to Europe’s competitiveness crisis is both proven and cost-effective.
The Coalition for Europe’s Digital Future
Success requires mobilising every stakeholder who has something to lose from Europe’s decline:
European Institutions*: Your institutional relevance depends on European sovereignty. Champion this intervention as the defining achievement of European integration—bigger than the Single Market, more transformative than the Euro.
National and Regional Governments: Your tax bases erode as businesses fail and talent emigrates. The digital-first approach multiplies the impact of every euro invested, creating jobs and prosperity in your jurisdictions.
Venture Capitalists and Investors: Your 90% failure rate in identifying unicorns becomes history. The Operating System provides data-driven insights that multiply investment effectiveness by 5-10x through virtual capital creation.
Founders and Business Leaders: Your companies face extinction or foreign acquisition. The intervention framework offers a pathway to global competitiveness through accelerated innovation and reduced barriers. This is not about subsidies—it’s about creating the ecosystem where European businesses can thrive.
Academic and Research Institutions: Your brightest minds are leaving for Silicon Valley and Shenzhen. The Innovation Operating System will restore Europe as a destination for talent, not an exporter of it.
Civil Society: Economic decline destroys social progress. Environmental goals, workers’ rights, and democratic values all depend on European prosperity. Join the coalition that secures the foundation for all other ambitions.
Next Generation Europeans: This is your future being decided. Demand action from every politician, business leader, and institution. Make strategic sovereignty the defining issue of the next European elections.
The Bondo Foundation Solution: Ready for Implementation
The Bondo Foundation has invested years developing the theoretical framework, digital tools, and implementation methodology to reverse Europe’s decline. Our solution is:
Most remarkably, the total implementation cost represents a fraction of the value created. Where climate mitigation demands trillions with uncertain returns, Europe’s digital sovereignty can be secured for billions with guaranteed multiplier effects. The intervention itself becomes Europe’s first mega-unicorn—demonstrating exactly how Europe can compete globally while solving its own existential challenge.
The Call to Action: 36 Months to Save Europe
Every stakeholder must act immediately:
Bondo Foundation stands ready to share our framework, tools, and expertise for the benefit of Europe’s 450 million citizens. We have developed the cure for Europe’s decline—but only European leadership can administer it.
The choice is binary and immediate: implement this intervention and secure Europe’s place in the digital future, or accept irreversible decline into geopolitical irrelevance. Unlike climate change, we know exactly what to do, how to do it, and what it will achieve. The only question is whether Europe possesses the will to save itself.
The next 36 months will determine whether Europe thrives in the 21st century or becomes its most elegant casualty. The solution exists. The framework is ready. The only missing element is action.
Contact Bondo Foundation today to begin Europe’s digital transformation.
Tomorrow may literally be too late.
* European Commission, European Council, European Parliament, European Central Bank, European Investment Bank
Europe will become even more economically subordinate to China and the USA. Based on current growth trajectories, Europe’s GDP growth remains stuck at 1.1-1.5% annually37, while China and the USA pull further ahead. PwC projections show the EU27’s share of world GDP falling below 10% by 205038, suggesting Europe will account for perhaps 12-13% of global GDP by 2035 – down from 16% today.
European workers face declining living standards. With productivity growth lagging at 0.9% compared to 1.5% in the USA, European wages stagnate while costs rise. The demographic crisis forces higher taxation to support an aging population in the absence of saving and investment based pension systems in most European countries, reducing disposable income and investment capacity. Youth unemployment in southern Europe approaches 35-40% as traditional industries collapse and new tech sectors remain underdeveloped.
Complete technology dependence and digital colonisation
Europe becomes technologically colonised. China projects 30% of global semiconductor production capacity by 203039, while Europe remains import-dependent. By 2035, European companies rely entirely on Chinese chips for consumer electronics and American AI for business operations. European tech “sovereignty” becomes an historical footnote (Exhibit 6).
Digital infrastructure controlled by foreign powers. Chinese 5G/6G networks dominate European telecommunications, while American cloud platforms handle European data. European companies become essentially distribution channels for Chinese hardware and American software, with minimal value creation happening domestically.
Foreign venture capital and private equity players control European companies. Already today, many strategic decisions relating to European technology companies are discussed and decided upon in American board rooms.
Demographic catastrophe and social breakdown
Europe faces a demographic death spiral. Working-age population declines by 0.4% annually through 204040, meaning 15% fewer workers by 2035. The dependency ratio reaches crisis levels, with fewer than two workers supporting each retiree41. The effect is aggravated by the absence of a privatised pension fund system in most European states.
Political fragmentation and institutional breakdown
European integration reverses. National governments, facing domestic pressure, renationalise policies and withdraw from EU frameworks. The eurozone fragments as southern European countries, unable to service debt, consider currency exits. The EU becomes a shell institution managing declining relevance.
Civil unrest becomes endemic. Social unrest increases as economic conditions deteriorate42, with regular protests by farmers, workers, and pensioners. Intergenerational conflict intensifies as younger Europeans face declining prospects while supporting aging populations.
Industrial decline and supply chain vassalage
European manufacturing becomes marginal. China’s manufacturing dominance expands further49, while European factories close or move production to Asia. Germany’s automotive industry, unable to compete with Chinese electric vehicles, contracts by 40%. European “manufacturing” becomes final assembly of Chinese components.
Critical supply chain dependencies deepen. Europe imports 90%+ of semiconductors, batteries, and renewable energy components from China. Any trade disruption paralyses European industry within weeks. European companies become Chinese subcontractors, with technology and design controlled in Beijing.
Energy and resource vulnerability
Europe remains energy-dependent despite green transition. While renewable capacity grows, dependence on Chinese solar panels, batteries, and critical minerals creates new vulnerabilities. Russia’s energy leverage shifts to China’s technology leverage, with Europe equally constrained.
Food security deteriorates. Climate change reduces agricultural productivity while farming protests and regulations hamper adaptation. Europe imports increasing percentages of food from unstable regions, creating new security vulnerabilities.
Europe becomes a contested space between superpowers. Without strategic autonomy, European countries split between Chinese and American spheres of influence. Eastern Europe aligns with whoever provides security guarantees, while Western Europe tries to maintain neutrality but lacks leverage.
Military dependence deepens. European defence spending, constrained by fiscal crises, fails to match threats. Europe relies entirely on American protection while facing Chinese economic coercion, creating an impossible strategic position. Europe’s security relate decisions are taken in the White House.
European societies lose confidence and dynamism. Brain drain accelerates as talented Europeans emigrate to centres that drive change. European universities and research institutions become second-tier, unable to compete for talent or funding. Cultural soft power evaporates as Europe becomes inward-looking and defensive.
By 2035, Europe resembles Latin America more than the global power it once was – middle-income countries with good infrastructure but limited global influence, dependent on foreign technology and capital, struggling with demographic decline and political instability.
European cities remain pleasant places to live for those who can afford it, but economic dynamism has moved elsewhere. Europe becomes a museum of its former greatness – beautiful, historically significant, but no longer shaping the world’s future.
The tragedy is that this decline is entirely avoidable with decisive action today. But current trajectories point unmistakably toward irrelevance. The choice facing European leaders is stark: transform now or accept managed decline into geopolitical insignificance.
The window for preventing this scenario is perhaps 36 months. After that, demographic trends, technology gaps, and political fragmentation may make decline irreversible, regardless of policy efforts.
The EUs Founding Fathers – from left to right: Robert Schumann, Jean Monet, Konrad
Adenauer, Alcide De Gaspari, Paul-Henri-Spaak, Joseph Bech, Johan Willem Beyens – Image AI generated
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