Introduction
In September 2024, Europe received a serious warning, a wake-up call delivered by Mario Draghi’s critical report on »The future of European competitiveness«. According to the report, the EU lacks industrial dynamism, innovation and investment. In addition, its productivity growth is low. Europe might face »slow agony« caused by three fundamental structural challenges: an aging workforce, fierce export competition in increasingly restricted global markets and a lack of competitiveness in advanced technology.
One of the most important challenges mentioned in the report is the innovation gap between Europe and the United States – especially due to slow productivity growth and lagging tech innovation and adoption. In fact, EU economic growth has been persistently slower than in the US over the past two decades. Around 70% of the gap in per capita GDP compared to the US is explained by lower productivity in the EU. »For the last decades, the key driver of the rising productivity gap between the EU and the US has been digital technology – and Europe currently looks set to fall further behind«, says Martin Thelle, Senior Partner at Implement Consulting Group. He and his team took a closer look at Europe's innovation gap and AI’s potential to close it. They found that closely connected to the innovation gap is an R&D investment gap. »What’s interesting is that the primary explanation behind Europe’s R&D gap compared to the US is a discrepancy in private R&D investment«, explains Martin Thelle. Current figures show that public R&D investment levels are similar with 0.7% in the EU against 0.8% of GDP in the US.
Another reason for the innovation gap is that R&D intensity in Europe’s high-tech sectors did not keep pace when US high-tech intensified R&D around 2013. The increase was triggered by new scientific discoveries in deep learning and amplified by R&D-friendly policies and cheap capital following the financial crisis. European businesses failed to sufficiently invest in these new opportunities. For over 20 years, the same companies, mostly from the automotive sector, have dominated EU R&D activity. Researchers call this »the middle technology trap«, meaning that the technology is neither cost-effective nor at the cutting edge, thus failing to yield significant returns.
According to analysts, it will be challenging to reverse this underinvestment in the short term. Nevertheless, many experts and politicians consider AI to be the biggest opportunity when it comes to closing the innovation gap and strengthening Europe’s competitiveness. And according to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, the AI race is far from being over: »We’re only at the beginning«, she said during the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit (2025). »The frontier is constantly moving. Global leadership is still up for grabs.«