Is It Game Over For Europe?

Yesterday’s show from the DLD conference was about the need for Europe to relearn the language of power. Today, things get even more dire for our European friends. I asked another DLD speaker, Carl Benedikt Frey, a Swedish economic historian who teaches at Oxford, whether it’s “game over” for Europe in terms of its ability to compete with American and Chinese big tech. His answer: not yet—but close. Frey’s last book, shortlisted for the 2025 Financial Times business book of the year, is entitled How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation and the Fate of Nations. But it’s specifically Europe’s economic progress and the fate of European nations that most concerns Frey. Unless Europeans create a true single market for services, he warns, it really could be the end of the European dream of continent-wide progress. So no more crossroads for a continent perennially at a crossroads. And that single market, Frey explains, is ultimately a matter of political rather than economic will.

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