Pieter Levels influences report on European
competitiveness
Pieter Levels ideas to save Europe are now making it into official European Commission reports.
Pieter Levels is many things: indie hacking legend, podcast extraordinaire, and now, European power player.
For months now, Levels has been beating the drum on the need to make his native Europe competitive again in tech. He even started selling "Make Europe Great Again" hats and eu/acc hoodies to spread the word.
Well, his efforts are beginning to pay off, as he was one of the experts tapped for guidance by the economist and former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi before writing his new report on European competitiveness.
I'm not sure what he said to Draghi, but whatever it was, it worked. Multiple of his suggestions made the final report:
A minimum revenue cut off for current and new regulations.
Creating an EU-wide incorporation business form so that it's easier to start a pan-EU business.
Make starting an online EU business easy.
0% corporate tax for the first three years of a new business.
View tech and AI as friends, not enemies.
Teach tech, AI, and coding in all schools.
That all sounds great, but considering we are still at the "report" stage of the legislative process, it's a little premature to bust out the champagne (looking at you, Marc).
However, we can celebrate two things:
The vibe shift happening in Europe. Europeans are finally realizing that they are falling behind the West and East. The hope is that this spurs a European renaissance and, in the process, make Europe a pleasant place for founders.
The influence that a successful, smart, and chronically online person can have. As Levels himself put it, if you want to support the eu/acc movement, the best thing you can do is post about it. The powers that be are listening. All you have to do is speak up.
While it probably could be easier, starting a business in the EU is fairly easy already.
There are also tax breaks in the first couple years, at leat in The Netherlands so I assume that's the same across the EU.
Tech and coding is taught in schools, but as with everything schools, it's a slow process.
This is the most important one. It's just ridiculous the hoops we have to jump through, and it makes it difficult to compete with existing huge companies that have endless supplies of lawyers to deal with all the litigation.
I like Pieter, and I basically support what he's proposing. However, I think the way he's pushing it, aligning himself with the MAGA crowd (or copying Victor Orban's slogan) makes anything that comes after dead on arrival for most Europeans. It seems tone-deaf, and impractical if the goal is to get wide support for those common-sense proposals. But that's just me.
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