In Search of Unicorns: European Industrial Policy and the Geopolitics of Trade and Competition in High Tech

Amid growing economic competition with the US and China, the European Union (EU) has recently returned to the industrial policy agenda of its European Economic Community predecessor from half a century ago: how to cultivate valuable European high tech champions, or unicorns. To avoid the contradictions of “Fortress Europe” – internal trade liberalization but high protectionist external tariffs that could result in trade wars, the EEC opted to use industrial policy tools to support high tech in the region in the 1970s and 1980s. This paper examines past European industrial policy and the role of business forums in high tech to shed light on the efforts of European policymakers to solicit business input and implement research and technology policies that could yield globally competitive tech giants. We find the executive institution of the European Commission created business forums and developed extensive programs to support European technology firms like the European Strategic Programme on Research and Technology (ESPRIT), designed to support European firms in the race for IT market share. And we trace how those efforts paved the way for the genealogies of European business forums (including the European Round Table of Industrialists) and framework research programs that remain hallmarks of the EU today. Finally, this paper draws on the history of European industrial policy to examine the promise of European strategic autonomy in the trade wars of the present.