How the EU Strangles Innovation: Thirty years of precaution

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Something is holding Europe back.

Europe has incredible economic and cultural potential. Not only can we draw on a long tradition of innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation – from the Ancient World through the Renaissance, the Scientific and Industrial revolutions, the Age of Enlightenment and the period of mass industrialisation – but Europe is also home to world-leading companies and scientific institutions.

But today, the mood, and often the reality, of the continent, is pessimistic. New innovations struggle to gain a foothold, risk-taking is frowned upon, and a sense of sclerosis has set in. Few would use the words bold, ambitious, or innovative to describe European companies, academics or institutions.

This report argues that the underlying problem is an attitude of precaution. This is the attitude of “better safe than sorry”. In policymaking circles, this is known as the “precautionary principle”. This principle proposes that no effort is too great to ward off the risk of danger – no matter how small that risk may be.

The result – from fields as diverse as nuclear policy to public security, farming to town planning – is that technocrats spend an inordinate amount of time demanding and implementing risk-reduction measures to avoid unforeseen consequences. Europe is drowning not just in paperwork but in risk-aversion.

Breaking the stranglehold that the precautionary principle has on Europe’s policymaking elites is a necessary first step to reviving – politically, economically, and culturally – Europe, which currently sits enchained by the EU’s ideology of precaution.

The precautionary principle has become a preventative principle. This report argues that we must abandon it.