> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://atopicosphere.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why should the "peripheries" leave the EU? - URL: https://atopicosphere.ghost.io/en/articles/why-should-the-peripheries-leave-the-eu/ - Published: 2026-09-22T15:25:57.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-07T18:48:13.000Z - Description: Published on September 22, 2026 - Author: amorsantos - Tags: #en, #artigo, #news *An institutional reading of the hegemony of European guilds, in light of the economics of Acemoglu and Robinson* --- ### One vote, two Europes In October 2024, the European Council voted to impose tariffs of up to 35% on Chinese electric vehicles. Germany voted against the measure—Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes have too much capital at stake in China to risk a trade war. Portugal abstained. Not out of indecision, but out of calculation: Salvador Caetano relies on Chinese platforms to build competitive buses, while China has instructed its manufacturers to halt investments in countries that voted in favor of the tariffs. One vote, three positions, and three national interests on a collision course within the same "union." All of them stem from a founding core that refuses to abandon an economic model—now outdated—that fuels its memories of a prosperous past. This serves as the obvious starting point for two questions that inevitably arise when devising strategies for the individual and collective futures of the member states and the European Union: Is the EU destined to become a 20th-century economic relic? And if so, is it better to leave and negotiate from the outside than to stay and constantly ask for permission from within? ### European-flagged extractive institutions To understand the nature of this system, it helps to revisit the vocabulary developed by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson to explain why some nations prosper while others fail—applying it not to comparisons between countries, but to the dynamics within a single system of governance. Extractive economic institutions, write the two economists—who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024—are characterized by barriers to entry and regulations that stifle the free functioning of markets; extractive political institutions concentrate power in the hands of a narrow elite and impose few constraints on its exercise. **The most unsettling takeaway from the book *Why Nations Fail* is this: entrenched elites fear "creative destruction"—the innovation that threatens their established power**—more than they fear stagnation, because stagnation, unlike innovation driven by others, takes nothing away from them. Acemoglu and Robinson wrote about nations; the European Union is not a nation, and applying the concept without adaptation would be a methodological error—indeed, the most serious criticism of their work is precisely that it overlooks the relationships between countries as a unit of analysis, treating each nation as a closed system. Yet, the EU’s decision-making architecture fits the technical definition of an extractive institution at a supranational level with remarkable fidelity: barriers to entry (such as the corporate fragmentation that drives startups to Delaware), regulations that prevent markets from functioning freely (such as state aid linked to national budgets/demographics), and a founding elite—the Franco-German guild of 1957—that continues, seven decades later, to use the decision-making apparatus to curb the very type of creative destruction that threatens the agricultural, industrial, and logistical-fiscal model that has governed the EU for 70 years. The Common Agricultural Policy did not originate from an ideal of European solidarity, let alone from a development strategy. It originated from pure political transactionalism negotiated openly during the "empty chair" crisis of 1965: France made the opening of its industrial market to German exports conditional upon the creation of a permanent mechanism to protect its agriculture. In an official statement at the Élysée Palace on September 9, 1965, de Gaulle declared: "*Now, for us, it is evident that the Common Market cannot exist, nor even be conceivable, unless agriculture is part of it on the same terms as industry.*" > Two national oligopolies—German industry and French agriculture—enshrined their bilateral agreement within the permanent budgetary architecture of a six-nation community. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is in the founding text and inaugurated the extractive model that the most influential founding members proceeded to use to protect their guilds. And the German industrial guild is doing exactly the same thing right now, in plain sight—serving as the clearest example of the fear of creative destruction described by Acemoglu. In 2023, after the EU approved a ban on the sale of combustion-engine cars starting in 2035, Germany—under pressure from the *Verband der Automobilindustrie* (VDA), the association representing BMW, Mercedes, and Volkswagen, among others—negotiated a last-minute exemption for "e-fuels" that hardly anyone else wanted; France voted against it, viewing it as a step backward. It didn't stop there: in December 2025, under the Merz administration, Brussels yielded once again and expanded the exemption following further pressure from the VDA—which explicitly cited China's advances in electromobility as justification for keeping 20th-century technology alive. Note the full pattern: the same country that voted against tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to protect Volkswagen’s access to the Chinese market is simultaneously forcing the EU to keep internal combustion alive to protect that same Volkswagen from the opposite end of the technological spectrum. There is no contradiction here—it is a guild playing at every table at once, with two governments of different political stripes repeating the same move years apart. It is structural persistence, not the whim of a single minister. It is an elite protecting itself from innovation, exactly as the model predicts. The fear of creative destruction is not always proactive; sometimes it manifests merely as executive and institutional paralysis—and it is all the more revealing when the elite itself admits to it. In response to a parliamentary question from the Greens regarding Chinese investment in the automotive industry—disclosed by the *China.Table* newsletter in July 2026—the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy acknowledged in writing a "risk of losing sovereignty" over software, cloud systems, artificial intelligence, and automated driving. It also confirmed that it was already observing a drain of sensor technology expertise out of Europe, yet presented no plan to halt this outflow, stating only that it "works continuously" to preserve German industrial competitiveness. The government also acknowledges a structural flaw in foreign investment screening: currently, it can only review a Chinese investment if the investor acquires voting rights, yet an investor can gain effective control through other means—exclusive technology licensing, supply relationships, or access to software or data—without triggering any review at all. Furthermore, the government admits it lacks a comprehensive overview of the jobs created, the share of suppliers involved, or the actual technology transfer occurring at Chinese factories already established on German soil. "The government is acting without any plan," summarized Julian Joswig, a Green Party MP on the Bundestag’s Committee on Economic Affairs, adding that the executive branch "clings anxiously to yesterday's solutions" instead of providing the industry with planning certainty. It is the same instinct to protect the status quo that gave rise to e-fuels—only this time, without even the energy to actively negotiate the issue. And what about the Netherlands? Its position as Europe’s financial and logistical "gatekeeper"—with Rotterdam serving as the gateway to the Rhine and Amsterdam as a tax hub—did not happen by accident. It is the product of a genuine geographical lottery, combined with decades of tax policy designed specifically to attract corporate headquarters and capital that would otherwise have gone elsewhere. That position is also actively defended: when the Commission proposed "EU Inc." in March 2026—a single corporate regime aimed at ending the legal fragmentation that drives European startups to Delaware—it was the Dutch notariat (via the business lobby VNO-NCW) that raised the first formal objection, citing money-laundering risks to halt a digital incorporation process that did not require a notary. A textbook example of a barrier to entry. This pattern is not limited to protectionist regulation of oligopolies. It also extends to a governance model that—through existing demographic and economic biases—perpetuates the future strategic autonomy of member states. Between 2000 and 2022, Germany, France, and Italy accounted for 62% of all state aid spending in the Union—yet, when measured as a percentage of GDP, they drop to 6th, 13th, and 24th place. It is not that they are proportionately more generous toward their own industries; rather, they possess the demographic—and consequently budgetary—scale to dominate the absolute total under rules that are formally the same for all 27 members. > This is where the architecture reveals its most absurd aspect: by tying permitted aid to each Member State’s budget, the EU makes the global competitiveness of a project based in Estonia, Finland, or Greece hostage to its country’s demographics—as if the competition that project would face on the world market came from Brussels, rather than from Japan, South Korea, the United States, or China, whose state support knows no such per capita cap. It is an architecture designed to manage internal balances among 27 economies, applied without adaptation to a race no longer played on home turf—the classic regulatory barrier described by Acemoglu, only disguised as technical neutrality. ### The stress test, in summary **IBERIAN PENINSULA** It can be said—with some nuances—that Iberia, particularly within the Porto-Lisbon-Barcelona triangle, has created a technology ecosystem with immense economic potential. Notable examples include clusters focused on advanced software, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, big data, fintech, digital mobility, electronics and Industry 4.0 (automotive and aerospace), healthtech, cybersecurity, smart cities, biotechnology, deep tech, nanotechnology, and new materials. Several of these sectors already operate commercially beyond the EU. A word on key Iberian geographic assets: the ports of Algeciras and Sines, and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Portugal’s sovereignty over 1.7 million km² of ocean—the third-largest EEZ in the EU, potentially reaching nearly 4 million km² if the continental shelf extension is approved by the UN—stems from the Montego Bay Convention, not from Brussels. It is Portugal that decides the fate of wind, wave, and Fe-Mn nodule resources on the Atlantic seabed; this is an asset that remains viable under any scenario. These are value chains created and matured "in spite of" the EU. **EASTERN EUROPE** **Lack of scale and European venture capital** A very distinct pattern emerges outside Iberia, in countries with a fraction of its population: the combination of small demographic scale and the absence of a genuine European venture capital market drives a flight of value so predictable that it ought to have a name of its own. At the same time, however, it reveals an economic model—consolidated over two decades—characterized by vertical integration within German industry (and, to a lesser extent, French and Italian industry) and exposure to the "Dependent Market Economies" (DME) trap; this may help explain why these economies lag behind other peripheral regions in this regard. **Hungary**, with a population similar in size to Portugal's, gave the world Prezi—founded in Budapest in 2008–2009 and now headquartered in San Francisco—and LogMeIn, which also originated in the Hungarian capital and is now listed in the US as GoTo. Today, the country boasts a genuine domestic venture capital ecosystem (including the state-backed Hiventures fund and private funds like Day One Capital), yet it provides enough funding only for the seed and initial scale-up phases—not for the global-scale funding round that determines whether a company stays in Budapest or relocates to California. Hungary produces the founders but does not, on its own, retain the capital needed to keep them at home. **The Czech Republic**—comparable in scale to Portugal—offers the most complete example of this entire scenario: Avast, founded in Prague, grew into a cybersecurity giant valued at US$ 8.86 billion. However, its founders lost majority control as early as 2014, when the company needed capital from the British firm CVC Capital Partners to sustain its growth; it eventually merged with the US-based NortonLifeLock in 2022 to form Gen Digital, now listed on the Nasdaq. Productboard, currently the most valuable Czech startup (valued at US$ 1.7 billion), was backed by Silicon Valley heavyweights Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global, and today operates across Prague, San Francisco, Vancouver, and London. There was no shortage of talent or ideas; what was lacking was sufficient domestic capital to fund growth without relinquishing control. **Poland**—comparable in scale to Spain—serves as the counterpoint that confirms this diagnosis through its positive distinction: a representative of the Czech investment group PPF (which manages the fortune of the Czech Republic’s wealthiest family) describes Poland as "the most important market in the region" for Western venture capital funds. Scale changes the equation. CD Projekt, the creator of *The Witcher* and *Cyberpunk 2077*, remains listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, with its original founders collectively retaining more than a fifth of the equity—a level of ownership retention that neither the Czech Republic nor Hungary managed to replicate with their own most valuable companies. This is no coincidence; it is the same dynamic of scale that distinguishes Spain from Portugal, or Germany from Estonia—only here, it works in favor of retention rather than against it. | Country (scale) | Asset anchor/investment | Confirmed value | Year | | -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | --------- | | Hungary(\~PT) | CATL — Battery Gigafactory, Debrecen | €7,3 Billion | 2025 | | Czech Republic(\~PT) | KHNP — Two Nuclear Reactors, Dukovany | €18 Billion | 2025 | | Poland(\~ES) | LG Energy Solution — Battery Gigafactory, Wrocław | €3,2 Billion | 2016-2026 | *Methodological note: This table lists only investments with values publicly confirmed by a primary source or specialized press; it does not include an estimate of the impact on GDP, because rigorously calculating such a figure would require a dedicated macroeconomic modeling exercise, rather than a generic multiplier applied to three projects of vastly different natures.* What the table doesn't show—though the text above already has—is the variable that determines whether this investment generates retained value or merely passes through the country: who owns the capital, and whether there is enough domestic or European capital to ensure that the Prezi, Avast, or Productboard of tomorrow won't have to choose between staying small or relocating their headquarters. ### The exception that proves the rule: Estonia Before concluding this overview, it is worth presenting a somewhat alternative story from the periphery—though one involving a caveat regarding scale that is rarely voiced aloud. Estonia, with a population of 1.3 million—fewer people than live in the São Paulo metropolitan area—has produced ten unicorns, including Skype, Wise, Bolt, and Pipedrive. It ranks second globally in unicorns per capita, with the technology sector accounting for roughly 10% of its national GDP. It is worth noting that only three of these ten companies were founded after Estonia joined the EU in 2004; their dynamism is rooted in the post-Soviet liberalization of the 1990s, not in EU membership itself. The crucial difference compared to the Slovak or Hungarian models is that these companies were founded, are owned, and retain their intellectual property in Estonia: it is a case of organic dynamism, not a subsidized assembly-line platform. Yet, it is precisely because it is the size of an average European city that Estonia achieves what it does: a handful of founders, a concentrated engineering culture, and a state small enough to move quickly. This is not a model that Hungary, the Czech Republic, or Iberia can replicate by decree—it is an anomaly of scale proving that the periphery can be genuinely dynamic *despite* the EU, rather than a universally applicable recipe. ### New partners for a periphery without a single gateway If the "guild" architecture stifles domestic and European capital, the periphery must look outward—and the map of credible partners extends well beyond China and the US. Canada, through NeoGreen Hydrogen Corp (in a joint venture with Portugal’s Frequent Summer), is investing over a billion euros in a green hydrogen project in Portugal. Australia is already the EU’s second-largest supplier of critical minerals—surpassed only by domestic sources—with projections to capture an 18% to 22% share of the European lithium market by 2030, directly displacing Chinese supply. South Korea—already active in the Czech Republic (KHNP), Hungary (Samsung SDI), and Poland (LG Energy Solution)—deepened its cooperation with Brussels in May 2026 regarding critical minerals and battery supply chains. Aligning with middle powers will be crucial: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea, among others. The future of the European periphery (and the EU itself) does not run through the Berlin-Paris-Amsterdam axis. ### A museum of industrial relics or a clean break? We return, then, to the two questions with which we began. Is the EU destined to become a 20th-century economic museum, managed by a founding guild that would rather halt "creative destruction" than risk losing its grip? The data gathered here—the 1965 CAP, the e-fuels debates of 2023–2026, the fact that 62% of state aid is concentrated in just three countries, and the 2026 Dutch "notary" blocking "EU Inc." while companies like Talkdesk, OutSystems, Remote, Prezi, Avast, and many others seek refuge in the US—leave no room for reasonable doubt regarding the diagnosis. It is an extractive architecture—in the technical sense of the term—applied to an entire continent. The open question—and one this text does not resolve, as it differs from the one addressed here—is whether the correct response to an extractive model is to exit the system or to reform it from within. The story Acemoglu and Robinson tell regarding the transition from vicious to virtuous cycles is not a story of exit; rather, it is a story of broad coalitions of interests forcing political pluralism where extraction once prevailed. Whether such a coalition is possible within the EU’s current architecture, or only from the outside—with the threat of exit serving as the sole lever the founding guild still respects—is the question that determines everything else.