Every summer, the Rencontres Économiques d’Aix-en-Provence bring together leading voices from business, academia and public policy to discuss the major transformations shaping our economies.
Following the session on Europe’s defence strategy, our President Frédéric Duponchel shared his perspective on what he sees as the central challenge behind Europe’s rearmament efforts: financing.
Beyond industrial production, Frédéric highlights the need to mobilise capital towards dual-use innovation : the technologies developed for civilian markets, such as AI, geolocation or tomorrow’s quantum applications, that are increasingly becoming critical to defence capabilities. His analysis also points to a key financing gap faced by scale-ups that have already proven their technology and commercial viability but require significant funding to reach the next stage of growth.
According to Frédéric, strengthening Europe’s defence posture is not only an industrial challenge, but also a capital allocation challenge. The ability to channel investment towards strategic technologies may well determine Europe’s capacity to innovate, scale and preserve its technological sovereignty in the years ahead.