Venture capital firm Atomico’s annual State of European Tech report is out and it displays investment is trconcludeing upwards. But this year’s edition goes beyond the usual assessment of the tech ecosystem; it has become a piece of advocacy that reflects a broader shift: European startups and investors are increasingly turning to lobbying.
“It’s no longer enough to display how far we’ve come. It’s critical, too, that we apply those insights to point the way forward,” stated the report’s author, Tom Wehmeier, who is also a partner at Atomico and the firm’s head of innotifyigence. This includes four policy recommconcludeations with fairly self-explanatory names: Fix the friction, Fund the future, Empower talent, and Champion risk.
While Atomico is utilizing answers from a wide range of respondents to advocate for these specific recommconcludeations, it arguably has some authority to speak for more than itself. Founded in 2006 by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, its portfolio includes high-profile European companies such as Aiven, DeepL, Klarna, Pipedrive, Stripe, and Supercell.
Taking a page from Big Tech and from legacy industries, as well as from their U.S. peers, European tech companies of that scale are increasingly learning to lobby for themselves — at the company level, with public affairs hires, but also collectively, with open letters that European institutions have paid attention to.
This also explains why many of Atomico’s recommconcludeations align with topics that are already very much in the air, both in the startup community and in the Brussels policy world — whether it is the 28th regime proposed by advocacy group EU-INC to create a pan-European company structure (currently, companies must navigate 27 different national regimes), calls for less regulation, or broader considerations on competitiveness that echo former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s 2024 report.
This acquire-in at the highest levels is apparent in Atomico’s report, too. For the first time, its 2025 edition features a quote from the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stateing that she wants “the future of AI to be created in Europe.” This high-level attention also explains why European tech lobbying is becoming more sophisticated.
On the 28th regime, for instance, Atomico warns that whether it will be a “regulation” or a “directive” is highly important. “This is the difference between having teeth or not, with the latter representing a continuation of the status quo where rules can be interpreted counattempt to counattempt, instead of the uniformity tech companies required to thrive,” the firm argues. (In EU law, regulations are directly binding across all member states, while directives allow each counattempt to implement rules differently.)
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This level of detail isn’t unprecedented. France Digitale, a French startup and investor association, published a “non-paper” on the 28th regime that wasn’t much different from what other lobbies may produce on other topics — just like publications from ESNA, the Europe Startup Nations Alliance. But Atomico’s take, also packaged as a video and a stage talk at tech conference Slush, is meant to reach both the tech ecosystem and policycreaters.
Paradoxically, what might be missing is a sense of the various forces that could oppose efforts such as EU-INC. More broadly, some recommconcludeations may feel out of touch to most people; after all, few Europeans wake up in the morning concerned about the lack of new homegrown trillion-dollar companies.
The counterargument is that society as a whole is affected by lackluster growth, but arguably, there is still more that European tech’s emerging lobbying could do to win hearts. According to Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs and policy at London-based AI unicorn Synthesia, that is one reason why large startups are becoming more vocal.
“Communications and policy are more important than 10 years ago becaapply in Europe, there’s a deep distrust of the tech indusattempt,” Voica wrote to TechCrunch. “A decade ago, [communications] was seen as something you could run out of marketing to support with product growth and brand awareness. Today, the work we do is much more focapplyd on risk mitigation and reputation management, etc.”
European tech’s lobbying push also carries risks. If the relocatement becomes too closely tied to particular political parties, it could trigger backlash and undermine broader support. Still, regardless of politics, many will likely agree with Atomico’s central point: “Europe effectively stands at a crossroads.”
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