Europe, please look beyond the next election.

Today is German Unity Day.

A good day to remember that sometimes politics can achieve things that once seemed impossible.

And perhaps also a good day for a coup de gueule as we say in French !

Over the last few months, I have tried in my posts to find reasons to be optimistic about Europe.

European AI.

DeepTech.

Energy.

Space.

Industrial sovereignty.

There are reasons to hope.

But this week I read about SpaceX progressively moving away from Falcon 9 and its extraordinarily successful rideshare model as it transitions towards Starship.

And I had one uncomfortable thought:

Thank you, SpaceX.

Thank you for reminding us how dependent Europe still is on decisions taken on the other side of the Atlantic.

Yes, we have Ariane 6.

Yes, we have Vega-C bu Europe still lacks the launch cadence, economics and flexibility that SpaceX has made normal, especially for small satellites

Yes, Europe has extraordinary engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.

But where is our 20-year vision?

What should European AI look like in 2040?

How do we guarantee competitive access to space?

What energy mix will power our factories, data centres and homes in 2050?

Which technologies are so strategic that Europe simply cannot afford to lose control of them?

These questions are not French.

They are not German.

They are European.

In the 1960s and 1970s, French leaders made decisions on nuclear energy and strategic defence whose consequences would last generations.

We can debate those choices.

But we cannot deny that they were choices made with the next 30 or 50 years in mind.

France still benefits from them today.

On this German Unity Day, Germany provides another reminder.

Reunification required political courage, vision and the conviction that history could be shaped rather than simply managed.

So here is the question I would like to hear more often across Europe:

What are we building today that our great-grandchildren will thank us for?

Not at the next election.

Not in the next opinion poll.

In 2050.

In 2075.

AI. Energy. Space. Defence. Critical technologies.

Europe has the talent, the industrial base.

Europe even has the capital!

What it desperately needs is the willingness, vision and political courage to think in decades again.

Perhaps sometimes the wake-up call has to come from the other side of the Atlantic.

So, sincerely:

Thank you, SpaceX.

Now Europe, wake up.