I had a tremendous time in Belgium conducting seven meetings with members of parliament from Germany, France, Portugal, Czech, Belgium, Italy, and Lithuania.
I learned a lot and asked a lot of questions and also answered a lot of questions.
I am very grateful for ACT | The App Association for inviting me and for the great organization. A special thank you to all my colleagues and founders for making the experience so special.
I had some intense moments listening to arguments that did not make sense to me espcially coming from the USA. Apparently, the “U” in “EU” is not about “Union”, it is about “Opt-In” if you like, otherwise do things completely separate from the other 27 countries.
As a founder and owner, conducting business in Europe is important to me. I was hoping that the “28th regime” concept would free me from having to create multiple companies within the EU to satisfy each member country, but from what I’ve heard, that doesn’t look promising, which is a big mistake in my humble opinion.
Europe is trying to make it easier to do business in the EU and compete with the US and UAE, which make it very easy to do business, but unfortunately, I felt that red tape is still a major issue, and each country in the EU still wants to do things independently from the others.
I was shocked to witness an argument that a company from Rwanda has an easier path to work with a company in Portugal than a company from Spain trying to do business with a company in Portugal. How could that be????
My meeting with the chairman of mergers and acquisitions in the EU also resulted in a head-scratching moment when he identified that when a major corporation (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc,…) intends to acquire a startup in the USA, and it passes the FCC public interest test, is still subject to the EU stopping the sale if either one of the entities has presence in Europe. Really?
Overall, it was an eye-opener to the logic, speed, and intent of enabling Small Businesses with the power of AI to innovate and excel in the European market.
Even though there is still so much work to do, I still believe that the European market will one day reach a competitive level and reach its destined heights.
Thank you to ACT and the wonderful founders I presented with during these exceptional days in Brussels, Belgium. Oh, and thank you for the Waffles and Chocolates.
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