Pourquoi l’Europe n’a pas su créer une City continentale post-Brexit, et encore moins une City technologique

After the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union, no European capital has emerged as a financial hub. Regulatory fragmentation, lack of a common strategy, and technological gaps have stalled the development of a European equivalent to the City of London.

London remains an attractive financial center despite Brexit. While some regulatory and legal functions have shifted to the EU, the core of the British financial ecosystem remains largely intact. Fintech startups, market infrastructures, specialized law firms, and major investment banks continue to thrive in a concentrated environment where information, capital, and talent flow rapidly.

This agglomeration model, based on proximity and expertise density, is difficult to replicate within a geographically dispersed European space lacking a true single market for financial services.

Instead of a unified center, the EU has restructured around a functional distribution of roles:

Paris has become a hub for investment banking and asset management, particularly in ESG and insurance. Frankfurt remains the regulatory and prudential core with the ECB and banking supervision. Amsterdam has captured electronic trading, especially in stocks and ETFs. Dublin is home to the legal headquarters of many fintechs and financial tech giants. Luxembourg remains a key hub for fund management and structuring.

This specialization has not created the network effect of a single financial center. Each city is dependent on its own legal and fiscal environment, lacking fluid interoperability or common governance for technological regulation.

Regulatory Fragmentation: A Systemic Constraint

The core issue is institutional. The fragmentation of the European financial services market is due to dual inertia:

Lack of a Capital Markets Union (CMU) : Initiated in 2015, this reform remains incomplete. Securities markets, settlement systems, capital gains taxation, and listing rules still vary by country. Divergent approaches to technology : National regulators (AMF, BaFin, AFM, etc.) maintain significant autonomy. There is no European equivalent to the UK's regulatory sandbox. MiCA, the first common framework on crypto-assets, focuses on compliance rather than innovation.

This fragmentation hinders the emergence of pan-European tech-intensive startups. European fintech unicorns often have to adapt their models to each national market, incurring high regulatory and integration costs.

Digital Infrastructure: A Strategic Blind Spot

In areas like critical infrastructure, cloud, data, payments, and reporting, Europe struggles to develop operational and credible alternatives to American and Chinese giants. Ambitions for technological sovereignty remain largely out of sync with industrial realities and the specific needs of the financial sector.

The GAIA-X project, launched in 2020 to create an interoperable and sovereign European cloud ecosystem, highlights the limitations of the community method. Without a common regulatory foundation, strong incentives for pooling resources, or clear industrial governance, the project has not produced a concrete alternative to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Some participants have even integrated hyperscalers into their GAIA-X branded offerings, muddling the sovereignty message.

In financial markets, fragmentation is equally apparent. Euronext , Deutsche Börse , and SIX pursue parallel strategies without real technological convergence in critical areas: clearinghouses, post-trade transaction tools, Know Your Customer (KYC) infrastructures, and tokenization platforms. Each group deploys its own solutions, often on proprietary cloud technologies, preventing the emergence of a pan-European technical standard.

While European regulators impose increasingly complex requirements for reporting, traceability, auditability, and compliance , no coordinated effort has industrialized shared solutions across Europe based on modern architectures (permissioned blockchain, standardized APIs, trusted cloud).

Meanwhile, non-European hubs are advancing rapidly. London is engaging in initiatives for asset tokenization , open finance , and interbank digital identity , often in close partnership with the FCA and private consortia. Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Hong Kong are structuring hybrid infrastructures (regulated but open) around programmable finance.

Building a Technofinancial Sovereignty

In the absence of a continental financial center, Europe could have focused on creating a technological City where digital finance, data sovereignty, and intelligent regulation reinforce each other. This project remains in its infancy. Public initiatives are too fragmented, and industrial ambitions too modest.

Europe does have strengths, including a dense network of specialized fintechs (compliance, payments, sustainable finance), a banking market open to digitalization, and high standards for data protection. However, without pooling resources, these strengths do not combine effectively.

D’après FrenchWeb.