April 2025
How Startups and Scaleups Can Grow a Competitive Online Economy
These days, everyone is talking about European competitiveness and how to tackle it through a complex web of digital policy, market regulation, taxation and skills. But what does it take to make this interconnected system work? How can we ensure that Europe’s new and forthcoming policy strategies are up to meet the momentum for European competitiveness?
Removing barriers to a thriving European startup and scale-up ecosystem lies at the heart of the answer. To explore this, the Lisbon Council teamed up with Stripe Inc. to convene the Scaling Europe Summit: How Startups and Scaleups Can Grow a Competitive Online Economy, an invite-only gathering of 150 entrepreneurs, policymakers and analysts from across the European Union.
In a one-of-a-kind fireside chat with Paul Hofheinz, cofounder and president of the Lisbon Council, John Collison, co-founder and president of Stripe, shared lessons on Stripe’s rise and offered his thoughts on policies to grow the European online economy. Against this background, the Summit served as the official launch of When Europe Scales: How Startups and Scale-ups Can Drive European Competitiveness and Why Good Regulation Is More Important than Ever, a new policy brief by Lisbon Council Research. This timely publication offers practical policy recommendations to grow the European startup and scaleup ecosystem, focusing on a scaleup-centric single market, a unique talent hub and digital-native regulation.
Two additional high-level discussions enriched the action-driven dialogue by putting upfront shared challenges and success stories from across Europe. John Collison, cofounder and president, Stripe; Gabriel Hubert, cofounder and CEO, Dust; David Osimo, director of research, the Lisbon Council; Aura Salla, member of the European Parliament; and Amaryllis Verhoeven, head of unit for digital transformation of industry, directorate-general for internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs, European Commission, walked us through how smart regulation can effectively foster an open, competitive and innovation-driven single market for scale-ups.
The conversation then shifted to the EU Inc. initiative — a bold proposal for a pan-European legal framework to enable startups to scale across borders under a unified set of rules. Nils Behrndt, deputy director-general, directorate-general for justice and consumers, European Commission; Hayley Halvarsson, lead, Stripe Atlas; Fredrik Hjelm, cofounder and CEO, Voi Technology; Andreas Klinger, investor, Prototype Capital and co-lead, EU Inc; and Evgenia Plotnikova, general partner, Dawn Capital, shared their thoughts on this bold initiative and the road ahead for Europe.
András Inotai, acting head, taskforce on startups and scaleups, European Commission, closed the Summit with a forward-looking keynote on the European startup and scaleup strategy, opening the floor to a dynamic Q&A session with Nadine Schimroszik, technology correspondent, Handelsblatt.