The German startup ecosystem is off to a strong start in 2026: Between January and June, 3,053 new startups were founded. This represents a 52 percent increase compared to the second half of 2025 and means more startups were founded than in all of 2024.
Many laws in Europe are not about risk aversion, even though they are perceived like that (and there’s a media obsession with this trope).
Forbidding pension funds from using certain investment types does not reduce long term risk, it only reduces short term risk.
The real problem in Europe is that it ingested neoliberalism much more deeply than one might think. One consequence is that Europe has an ideologically motivated short term investment horizon.
Another consequence of this ideological stringency in Europe is that Europe has subsidies (by GDP) that are about half as big as US subsidies and a fourth of China’s.
Many european countries have a more than twice as large share of outsourced state tasks as the US.
Etc. Etc.
Which laws would you change?
The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) - Directive 2011/61/EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Investment_Fund_Managers_Directive_2011
You are right, no mentioning of any problems. What are the problems?
Well, a big problem is that many pension funds cannot invest into firms.