Sovereignty at what price? Mathias Burghardt at Les Rencontres Économiques d’Aix-en-Provence

Organized each year by the Cercle des Économistes, Les Rencontres Économiques d’Aix-en-Provence is one of Europe’s largest economic and social forums. It brings together business leaders, politicians, academics and citizens for three days of open debate.  

This year’s edition drew more than 400 speakers from over 50 countries, with Ardian taking part for the fourth consecutive year. Speaking alongside Jean-Pierre Clamadieu of Engie, Guillaume Faury of Airbus and Nicolas Namias of BPCE, Mathias Burghardt addressed the session’s central challenge: what price is Europe willing to pay to become sovereign? 

Europe must fight tomorrow’s battles, not yesterday’s

Mathias Burghardt argued that sovereignty requires thinking in systems. Investing in semiconductors or AI only makes sense if Europe also controls the low-carbon energy and data centers that power them. Whereas the private equity industry once focused on asset operations, ownership in critical infrastructure has become a geopolitical question, Mathias Burghardt said.

Ardian’s own portfolio reflects this focus on the full value chain: digital infrastructure through Verne, renewable energy through Akuo and GreenYellow, and semiconductors through Ardian Semiconductor – including a recent minority investment in VSORA, a French fabless company designing next-generation AI inference accelerators.  

On AI, Europe has fallen significantly behind, Mathias Burghardt said. When it comes to semiconductors for training AI models, Europe will struggle to catch up with global leaders such as Nvidia. But that does not mean Europe should step away from the race. “We should not fight yesterday’s battles, but tomorrow’s,” he said. “We need to look at the whole value chain – not by assuming we can be competitive on every link, but by choosing the links where we can win, and which will be essential in future power relations.”

VSORA is one example. The company designs semiconductors used for AI inference, rather than for training models – a field that will become increasingly important as AI models are deployed at scale. This is one link where Europe can still build competitive home-grown technology.  

The AION consortium is another major opportunity. Ardian, Artefact, Bull, Capgemini, the EDF group, the iliad Group, Orange and Scaleway combined their expertise to run as a candidate for a European AI Gigafactory in France. It represents more than €10 billion of investment and over 1 GW of capacity. 

Why foreign investors are choosing Europe

In Ardian’s recent $20 billion infrastructure fundraise, more than 60% of the investment came from non-European investors – including those in Asia and the Gulf whose allocation to Ardian has grown fivefold since 2020. These investors were drawn to Europe precisely because of its stability, its rule of law and the diversification it offers. They were also investing in sectors identified by the Draghi report: energy transition, digital infrastructure and connectivity. “We felt a real momentum – even a renewed affection for Europe,” Mathias Burghardt said.

Ardian’s identity as a European manager has become a differentiating factor. For international investors looking to deploy capital in Europe’s critical sectors, Mathias Burghardt said, “nationality counts.”  

Europe needs private capital and simpler rules to scale

The panel converged on a clear diagnosis: Europe must move beyond the logic of a consumer market and rebuild its own production power. For years, Europe too often relied on the assumption that open trade and low prices were enough. But geopolitical shocks of recent years – war, trade tensions with the US and China, energy vulnerability and accelerating dependence on foreign digital technology – have exposed the limits of that model. This means recovering something of Europe’s original industrial ambition to rebuild European power around strategic production and shared champions.

Europe will need an additional €750–800 billion in annual investment by 2030, according to the Draghi report. Long-term private capital is the only lever capable of operating at that scale and speed. But it comes with the condition that capital markets must deepen. European equity markets represent only 73–81% of EU GDP, compared with 270% in the US. Around €10 trillion of EU household savings, currently held in bank deposits, must be mobilized. And regulatory frameworks such as ELTIF 2.0 are needed to channel individual investors toward productive assets.

One proposal that addresses this directly is the European Commission’s “EU Inc.” initiative. This would allow the creation of a single European corporate framework for companies, enabling them to operate across the single market without establishing a separate subsidiary in each member state. Known as the 28th regime, this kind of structural reform would accelerate cross-border mergers and acquisitions within Europe and make it significantly easier to build the continental-scale champions that European sovereignty requires.  

In an era of strategic competition, capital anchoring and infrastructure ownership are not neutral choices as they carry real consequences. As Ardian’s own experience shows, being European – and being perceived as European – can matter when investing in critical sectors. Building European sovereignty and attracting global capital are not competing objectives but, in fact, two sides of the same coin.  

Learn more about European sovereignty from Mathias Burghardt