Track Opening - Sovereign Energy & Finance

Energy. Most managers never buy a kilowatt hour themselves, but everyone feels the effect: "energy costs went up, we have to save" is the standard line in every budget round. Meanwhile the AI tools your teams use daily are pushing demand beyond what European grids were built for, and owning the power, the grid and the compute has turned strategic. Where prices are heading, which industries gain and which get squeezed, and what a country wins or loses by hosting the infrastructure behind AI instead of renting it abroad.

Finance. Paying and investing already works fine: cards, instant transfers, ETF savings plans, a crypto app on your phone. But barely any of the rails underneath belong to Europe — two American networks handle the checkout, 99 % of the global stablecoin market runs on dollars. So a lot is happening at once: a digital euro, a euro stablecoin, tokenised funds, and Vienna quietly turning into one of Europe's crypto capitals. We sort through it — what each of these is actually for, where it makes sense, and who it affects.