Europe united in a more entrepreneurial atmosphere

by Sofia Trindade

“We have to start educating the new generations taking into account that a person that experiences fail may also be a hero in the future” said Mr. Pablo Zalba, Spanish MEP and Vice-President of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, during the European Parliament debate promoted by ThinkYoung’s Entrepreneurship Summer School’12, on the 11th of July.

However, Mr. Pablo Zalba was not alone to inspirer the 70 participants from 19 different nationalities. Ms. Lara Comi, Italian MEP and member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, was also present to explain the young audience the legislative process and measures being taken by the European Parliament to protect and trigger new investments and entrepreneurial ideas among European citizens. Arguing that “one of the problems that we are trying to solve is the access to money because is fundamental to have money to invest. And we approve project bond is one of the ways to invest in the European Silicon Valley”.

But money seems not to be the only problem as Europe doesn’t promote a culture of entrepreneurship. The stereotypes and the fear to fail is in most cases the biggest barrier to a more entrepreneurial oriented class in Europe. We can take as an example the Silicon Valley case “if you go trough all the bio’s of all the big entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley you will see that all of them happen to fail. And it’s a good thing. Why don’t we have examples in Europe of big entrepreneurs that have failed? Sure there is, but people try to hide them”, argued Ms. Isabel Benjumea, Spanish entrepreneur, at the EP debate. While the participants were paying close attention to speakers’ words and understanding their role in making the change!

“We are not responsible for changing your minds. We are responsible for regulations; we don’t have to forget that! It is a responsibility and a question that I pose to you also!” underlined Mr. Zalba while Ms. Isabel Benjumea added “there are two things that society doesn’t accept at all: one is success (really big success) and the other one is failure. There’s nothing wrong with failure and if we don’t understand that no one will ever became an entrepreneur”.

After a one hour effusive debate on the topic the participants left with the same passion and excitement that they entered the building and with even more power to start their startup, after getting to know that “the European Commission as a target: a company must be created in any member state in a maximum of 3 days and 1000 Euros”, as Mr. Zalba told them.