This article was last updated automatically by the platform.
Targeted tariffs for data centres and high-tech manufacturing to reduce Europe's energy-cost disadvantage versus the US and China, which is critical for AI and semiconductor competitiveness.
Every conversation about European AI and semiconductor capacity eventually arrives at the electricity bill. Industrial power in Europe costs a multiple of what competitors pay in the US, and the gap is structural: taxes, levies and grid charges, not just wholesale prices.
Targeted industrial tariffs for data centres and high-tech manufacturing would not solve Europe's energy transition, and they are not meant to. They are meant to stop the quiet relocation of energy-intensive digital infrastructure to cheaper grids, taking the jobs, the compute and the strategic capacity with it.
The Draghi report named energy costs as a first-order competitiveness problem. The data on this platform tracks demand in real time; the policy question is whether Europe prices its own industry into the race or out of it.
The data behind this insight
Policy recommendations from the S9+ coalition, the startup organisations of Europe's digital frontrunner (D9+) countries, driven by Danish Entrepreneurs.
More insights
The €800 Billion Question – Why Europe saves enough, but invests too little.
Europe is not short of capital. Across the continent, households save large parts of their income, pension funds manage vast pools of long-term wealth, and institutional investors control resources that should be capable of financing a new generation of European companies. Yet when those companies begin to grow, many still struggle to find the capital they need at home.
Mobilise pension-fund capital for European tech
Tax and regulatory frameworks that let EU pension funds allocate a small, prudent share to European venture and growth capital, to help close the structural funding gap with the US.
Replicate D9+ digital success across the EU27
Adopt the regulatory playbook of the digital frontrunners, from digital-first procurement to SME-friendly data rules, to lift the digital economy across all member states.