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Harmonise venture-capital rules across member states with a single licensing framework, so cross-border capital can flow to European startups without 27 separate rulebooks.
A venture fund that wants to invest across Europe today navigates 27 interpretations of marketing rules, investor classifications and fund structures. The friction is invisible in any single deal and enormous in aggregate: it fragments Europe's capital pool exactly where scale matters most.
A single venture passport, one licensing framework valid across the Union, is the kind of unglamorous plumbing that changes outcomes. It would let a fund raised in Copenhagen deploy in Lisbon with the same paperwork as at home, and let founders everywhere draw on the whole European pool rather than their national corner of it.
The US venture market is not deeper because Americans save more. It is deeper because it is one market. Europe's is 27. That is a policy choice, and it is reversible.
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.
An EU-wide unicorn retention framework
Incentives for scaling companies to stay headquartered in Europe, through stock-option reform, preferential tax treatment and public-procurement access, modelled on Nordic success.