Europe has still not succeeded in creating a large unified digital market, a handicap which explains the absence of European giants like Google and Facebook in the United States, or Tencent and Alibaba in China.

However, it is far from being a digital desert and the new regulatory projects (DSA/DMA) which will be announced on December 15 by the European Commission could promote its growth, provided they are supplemented by an ambitious industrial policy.

European delay

The United States gave birth to the five digital giants Google (search engines), Apple (mobile telephony), Facebook (social networks), Amazon (distance selling) and Microsoft (software), grouped under the acronym Gafam. Each of these champions of market valuation weighs hundreds of billions of euros.

China has been able to produce the equivalent with Baidu (search engines), Alibaba (distance selling), Tencent (video games and social networks) and Xiaomi (mobile telephony).

But Europe is non-existent in this heavyweight category.

In artificial intelligence, the EU files three times fewer patents than China and 3.4 times fewer than the United States, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In this field, on a global scale, more than half of the 51 “unicorns” – unlisted companies worth more than a billion dollars – are American, a quarter Chinese. The EU has only one.

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The reasons for failure

In Europe, “we do not yet have a large digital market (…), we have a patchwork of rules”, observes Alexandre de Streel, professor of law at the University of Namur and expert in digital regulations. Even when we adopt common rules, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), they are applied differently, he notes: “the Irish privacy regulator, for example, is more flexible than its French counterpart ".

A European start-up faces 27 different regulations that hinder its development and push it to seek salvation in the United States. This is all the more so as the culture of “venture capital” is underdeveloped on the Old Continent.

Europe also suffers from the absence of a common industrial policy, with public funds being dispersed in a multitude of national projects.

“Each country tries to create its own hubs”, regions concentrating universities, start-ups and large companies in an area of excellence, “but none of them has the critical size”, unlike Silicon Valley or the largest Chinese metropolises, emphasizes François Candelon, director of the BCG Henderson Institute think tank.

reasons to hope

“The idea that there could be a European 'Gafam' is over. Let's forget about that, ”says Mr. Candelon. According to him, Europe has already lost the battle of the general public internet (social networks, search engines, etc.) and the challenge is now “the digitization of European leaders in the various industries”. For example, in the automotive industry where IT becomes decisive for Volkswagen, Daimler or Renault to succeed in staying at the forefront.

The Europeans have already succeeded in imposing several large specialized digital platforms: Spotify (music), Blablacar (transport), Zalando (distance selling), Booking (tourism)…

According to investor Matthieu Lattes of the White Star Capital fund, Europe, where big fundraising is increasing, is gaining momentum: “We have seen the emergence of new generations of entrepreneurs (…) who say ' I too can create a global giant'”.

“The value of European technology companies has quadrupled in the last five years. Europe has the largest number of top scientists in artificial intelligence (…) and more software developers than the United States”, underlined the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at the show. WebSummit.

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Towards a digital Airbus?

For Mr. Candelon, we must “create partnerships with the American tech giants, but on our conditions, as equals”, and the new DSA and DMA legislation “goes in this direction”. He pleads for European sovereignty in digital technology.

The European Commission will have to show that it can be “as good in industrial policy as in regulation”, believes Mr. de Streel, by imagining an Airbus of technologies.

"After coal and steel, let's move forward on a pooling of digital production", also claims Frédéric Mazzella, founder of Blablacar.