Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest, Riga, Beirut, Baku, Shanghai, Hanoi. Eight very different cities but all of which, at one time or another over the past century, have been dubbed (tendentiously in some cases) the ‘Paris of the East’. These days, Bucharest (some of whose streets can, in the right light and with a large dose of reality suspension, resemble the French capital) arguably milks the epithet the most, semi-officially trading on its would-be Parisian credentials, first attributed in the 1920s.
There’s no doubt that Baron Haussmann’s 19th-century transformation of Paris, replacing grimy, narrow medieval streets with wide boulevards, grand avenues, and uniform neoclassical architecture, was a worthy model for others to follow. But overuse of the ‘Paris of the East’ label becomes tiresome after a while, and begets questions. Should cities, no matter where their architectural inspiration might come from, not trade on their own names? Is cravenly wanting to be viewed as something else not an admission of inferiority?
Silicon Valley everywhere
If use of ‘Paris of the East’ is moribund outside of Bucharest, there’s a newer, far more contemporary variant of what we might call ‘Paris of the East syndrome’ doing the rounds: Silicon Valley syndrome.
Oxford and Cambridge are Europe’s Silicon Valley. But then so is Sweden, which has apparently taken Ireland’s crown as the Silicon Valley of Europe. The Netherlands is also Europe’s Silicon Valley. So is Portugal. And Estonia. And Grenoble. And Cluj. Europe is Europe’s Silicon Valley.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Every tech hub wants to be Silicon Valley, just as every 1920s city wanted to be Paris. It’s arguably a worthy goal, but it also betrays Europe’s inferiority complex when it comes to technology and innovation.
Comparisons are rarely helpful. Better to be yourself, do your own thing, and do it well.
Bros before code
Before Europe gets too misty-eyed about California, it’s worth asking what, exactly, it is hoping to emulate. Silicon Valley’s record in producing world-changing technology is genuinely impressive, although its culture, rather less so. The 80-hour weeks, the performative hustle, the notorious ‘bro’ culture, the general lack of any work-life balance. It’s all a huge contrast with Europe, which has spent decades building something very different, namely a working model of capitalism that doesn’t require its participants to sacrifice their twenties on the altar of a stock option.
The French, not unreasonably, have enshrined a 35-hour working week. Most Germans clock off in time for dinner. Paid leave across the EU averages 20 days, with several countries offering considerably more. Both maternity and paternity pay are ubiquitous, as is universal healthcare.
One could mount a perfectly serviceable economic argument here (worker wellbeing correlates with productivity; burnout is expensive; diverse workplaces outperform homogenous ones). But that rather misses the point. Europe has different values, and those values are worth defending, not apologising for.
Own label
The deeper irony is that Europe doesn’t need Silicon Valley’s cast-offs. It has its own success stories, built largely on European terms. Spotify didn’t emerge from Palo Alto; it came from Stockholm. Revolut and Wise are Baltic outfits. ASML, the Dutch firm without which nobody in the world can manufacture advanced semiconductors, is so dominant in its field that it makes Silicon Valley’s much-vaunted monopolies look modest. UiPath, the robotic process automation giant, is a Romanian invention. Bolt hails from Tallinn.
Europe’s strengths in deep tech, industrial software, privacy-respecting data infrastructure, gaming and fintech are genuine competitive advantages. Not consolation prizes for failing to produce a culture of hoodie-wearing billionaires.
The journalists who reach for the ‘Silicon Valley of Europe’ label (and there are plenty of them) might argue they’re simply signalling to readers that a place is worth watching. That’s fair enough. But the formulation carries a subtext, that the measure of a tech hub’s worth is how closely it resembles somewhere in California. That’s an odd standard for a continent that invented the world wide web.
Cluj doesn’t need to be Silicon Valley. It needs to be Cluj. Estonia’s digital governance model has no American equivalent to compare itself with, because America hasn’t built anything remotely like it. That’s the point. Do something no one else has done, and you don’t need a comparison.
Europe’s inferiority complex is, at root, a failure of imagination. The talent is there and the capital is accumulating. Building technology on Europe’s own terms, and making a name that needs no parenthetical explanation, is well within reach. It might even, in time, become someone else’s benchmark.
Photo: Dreamstime.
