As a European citizen I think it boils down to access to the capital. EU/EEA is not a country and the market is sort of fragmented. The big players are UK, France, Germany, everyone else does not have the same access to money as say in the US. Folks want to do it but there is a glass ceiling. Hence you have these collabs among large institutions to tap into funds such as from Horizon which are academic in nature and do not translate well into products.
The fun part is that people whining about not being able to raise common capital and operate across whole EU due to regulation tend to also be the most rabid opposers of any kind of common regulation that would bring whole EU into alignment and make it a less fragmented market.
