Introduced by Andreas Munk Holm, this EUVC Live at GoWest series spotlights the thought leadership of policymakers, institutional investors, GPs, corporates, and public capital leaders around one defining question:
How does Europe mobilize its own capital to secure its technological future?
Across the sessions, one theme emerges repeatedly:
Europe does not lack talent.
It does not lack innovation.
It does not lack savings.
It lacks coordination.
In this episode, Andreas sharpens the debate with a more urgent framing: what does sovereignty actually mean in 2026?
Europe is not facing a crisis of ideas, talent, or ambition. It is facing a crisis of industrial depth. The constraint is no longer whether Europe can invent, but whether it can build and scale. Sovereignty today is not abstract. It is systemic.
It lives inside fabrication capacity, supply chains, and infrastructure. It means semiconductor production. It means rare earth refinement and lithium processing. It means baseload energy and grid orchestration. It means scale-up capital deep enough to keep strategic companies European as they grow.
Europe remains exceptional at invention. It still struggles with industrialisation. Too many breakthrough companies scale elsewhere. Too much strategic technology is financed abroad. Too little patient capital is coordinated at the continental level.
Across the conversation, one pattern becomes clear. Europe does not collapse under pressure. It coordinates. But in 2026, coordination must extend beyond treaties and regulation. It must include capital allocation, infrastructure delivery, and execution speed.
Venture capital allocates the future, but LP capital determines depth. Energy systems determine industrial resilience, and materials innovation underpins decarbonisation. Sovereignty is no longer defined by borders alone. It is defined by who controls and can reliably operate the stack.
The question, then, is no longer whether Europe has the capability. It is whether it can align itself fast enough.
How Europe Turns Crisis into Innovation and Why We Must Do It Again
Danijel Višević, General Partner and Co-Founder at World Fund, set the stage by placing today’s sovereignty debate in a historical context.
In 1951, coal and steel were not merely industrial commodities; they were the backbone of war. Control over these resources determined military capacity and economic reconstruction. Europe’s response was radical. Instead of competing for dominance, it integrated coal and steel production through the European Coal and Steel Community. This was sovereignty through coordination: politically bold, economically unprecedented, and culturally transformative. The insight was simple: by pooling control over critical inputs, Europe could secure peace and rebuild prosperity.
This pattern has reappeared at moments of systemic stress. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe reorganised to absorb geopolitical transformation. During the COVID crisis, it coordinated fiscal stimulus and vaccine procurement at scale. Following the shock of Russian gas dependency, it accelerated joint energy strategies and diversification efforts.
Europe does not collapse under strain. It coordinates.
Yet coordination today must extend further than treaties and regulatory alignment. In 2026, sovereignty requires coordinated capital allocation and industrial capability. It demands the ability to finance, build, and scale strategically important industries within Europe itself.
Because sovereignty today is no longer primarily about flags or formal authority. It is about semiconductors and fabrication capacity. It is about rare earth refinement and lithium supply chains. It is about base load energy and grid orchestration. It is about capital depth and the balance sheets capable of underwriting industrial scale.
Sovereignty lives inside systems.
If sovereignty is systemic, Europe’s weaknesses are measurable.
Europe produces less than ten percent of the semiconductors it consumes. It imports approximately 98 percent of its rare earth elements. Venture capital investment remains significantly below US levels, particularly at growth stages. In climate technology, only a small fraction of European startups successfully reach Series B. Since 2015, the cumulative scale-up gap has amounted to billions of euros annually.
Europe excels at invention. It struggles with industrialisation.
The bottleneck is not scientific capability. European universities and research institutions remain world-class. The constraint lies in capital depth, risk appetite, and execution velocity. Too many breakthrough companies are forced to seek non-European capital to scale. Too much strategic technology is commercialised elsewhere.
Without sufficient pools of patients, coordinated capital, sovereignty becomes rhetorical rather than operational.
What Great Looks Like in Venture — When Performance Isn’t Enough
Heidi Lindvall, General Partner and Investor of Pale Blue Dot, reframed the role of venture capital within this broader context.
Performance, she argued, is necessary but insufficient. Financial returns remain essential; without them, funds do not survive. Yet capital allocation is never neutral. Every investment decision implicitly shapes the structure of the future economy.
Her framework was clear:
Success = Performance × Trust.
Trust encompasses brand, values, integrity, and long-term impact. A fund with weak performance fails. A fund with strong performance but weak trust may win once but rarely endures. Long-term compounding requires both.
The LP Perspective on Systemic Capital
In a fireside conversation following Lindvall’s talk, Narina Mnatsakanian, Partner & Chief Impact Officer at Regeneration VC, added the perspective of institutional capital.
Pension funds and long-term allocators seek financial returns. However, their beneficiaries also seek stability, security, and a livable planet. The separation between fiduciary responsibility and systemic responsibility is narrowing.
Capital allocation today shapes climate outcomes, industrial resilience, and geopolitical stability. If European LPs fail to back industrial depth within Europe, they implicitly reinforce external dependencies. The decision is therefore not merely financial; it is structural.
The conversation made clear that sovereignty requires alignment across GPs and LPs. Without that alignment, capital will continue to flow toward short-term optimisation rather than long-term resilience.
Unlocking Critical Minerals Through Biology
Dr. Isabella Fandrych, Co-Founder and General Partner at Nucleus Capital, shifted the focus to a frequently underestimated constraint in the energy transition: materials.
The decarbonisation of energy systems depends on vast quantities of copper, lithium, nickel, and manganese. Current extraction methods are geopolitically concentrated and often environmentally destructive. This creates both ecological and strategic vulnerabilities.
Biology offers alternative pathways. Microorganisms can separate metals from rock through bioleaching processes. Engineered proteins can extract minerals from waste streams. Certain plants naturally accumulate metals such as nickel, enabling novel harvesting methods.
Industrial decarbonisation is therefore not only an energy problem; it is a chemistry and materials science challenge. Without secure and sustainable access to critical inputs, the energy transition cannot scale. And without scaling the transition, Europe’s industrial competitiveness remains exposed.
The Case for Nuclear
Jordan Billiald, Principal at IQ Capital, brought energy realism into the conversation.
Europe has achieved reductions in territorial emissions, but part of that reduction reflects deindustrialisation and the outsourcing of carbon-intensive production. This accounting improvement does not equate to sovereignty.
If Europe aims to support advanced manufacturing, AI data centres, electrified transport, and industrial resilience, it requires reliable base load energy. Renewables are indispensable but inherently intermittent. Nuclear energy, by contrast, is dispatchable, energy-dense, and domestically controllable.
The nuclear debate, Billiald argued, should be practical rather than ideological. The relevant questions are whether Europe can build, finance, and operate nuclear infrastructure safely and at scale. If the objective is reindustrialisation alongside net-zero commitments, nuclear remains one of the few scalable levers available.
The Urgent Need for European Energy Sovereignty and How We Get There
Moritz Jungman, Partner at First Energy Ventures, expanded the discussion by focusing on the electricity system itself.
Europe has made substantial progress in deploying renewable capacity. The emerging constraint is not solely generation; it is grid orchestration. Electricity systems are shifting from centralised and predictable models toward decentralised and volatile ones. Power now flows bidirectionally, and millions of distributed assets interact dynamically.
Distribution system operators were not originally designed for this level of complexity.
The opportunity lies in software-driven optimisation: advanced orchestration tools, dynamic throughput management, and intelligent coordination of distributed resources. Energy sovereignty depends not only on how much power is produced, but on how effectively the system is managed.
Generation without orchestration does not create resilience.
The Core Thesis
Across each session, a coherent conclusion emerged.
Europe does not lack talent, scientific excellence, or entrepreneurial ambition. It lacks sufficient capital depth, industrial coordination, and infrastructure velocity.
Sovereignty in 2026 is not a slogan. It is an investment strategy.
If Europe intends to secure long-term competitiveness, decarbonise its economy, and build resilience against geopolitical shocks, capital must move deliberately into supply chains, materials innovation, energy systems, and industrial scale-up.
Coordination must extend beyond policy into finance.
Because sovereignty is no longer defined by borders alone.
