Europe has the talent, capital and industrial base to compete with the US and China — so why does it still make building companies so unnecessarily hard?

In Episode 24 of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz talks with Marvin Baumann, investor at Prototype and one of the core team members behind the EU Inc. initiative, about fixing Europe’s fragmented startup ecosystem — and the much bigger vision beyond it. From EU Inc. and European federalism to robotics, brain drain, high-agency culture and Euromaxxing, this is a conversation about building a Europe that is richer, more ambitious, more technologically advanced and more optimistic.

Learn more about EU Inc: https://www.eu-inc.org/

Marvin’s Eurofuturism Essay: https://baumann.vc/blog/eurofuturism

Protoype Capital: https://www.prototypecap.com/

Europropaganda Merch Shop von Prototype: https://prototype-shop.com/

Dealroom on European-founded unicorns: https://dealroom.co/resources/european-diaspora-index-founder-flows/

American Braindrain Pitch: https://www.rebuilding.tech/

China being the largest economy in the world until the end of the 19th century: https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2023

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Find Marvin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvin-baumann/

Follow Marvin on X: https://x.com/MarvinTBaumann/

Subscribe to Marvin on Substack:

In the 23rd episode of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz talks with Marijn Markus — AI lead and data scientist at Capgemini, LinkedIn Influencer, commentator on Ukraine, disinformation and hybrid warfare, and volunteer delivering aid directly into Ukraine.Fresh from his fourth trip to Ukraine, Marijn explains how the country has become the laboratory of modern warfare: autonomous drones and interceptors evolving in weeks; timescales that European militaries struggle to match. But the war is not contained to Ukraine alone: We discuss Russia’s hybrid attacks on Europe, the drone threat, AI-generated propaganda and bot networks, foreign interference in European politics, Europe’s dependence on the United States, and what genuine European strategic sovereignty would require.The conversation ultimately turns to a darker question: are we already living through the opening stages of World War III — and, if so, what should Europeans actually do about it?----Note: At one point Marijn speaks of the Republic of Tuva (Tuvia) having massive diamond mines - but the diamond mines are in Sakha (Yakutia) and Arkhangelsk.Follow Marijn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marijnmarkus/ Follow Marijn on Substack: https://datadronesdisinfo.substack.com/---

In the 22nd episode of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Georgian political analyst and civic activist Mariami Japaridze about Georgia’s fight for freedom, its European future, and the growing confrontation between democracy and Russian authoritarian influence.

Few countries illustrate Europe’s geopolitical vulnerability as clearly as Georgia. Long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Georgia had already experienced military aggression, occupation, disinformation and hybrid warfare. Today, the country is again at a crossroads: a deeply pro-European society is confronting an increasingly authoritarian government, while Russia remains a constant force in the background.

Mariami brings both analytical expertise and first-hand experience to the conversation. She explains how Georgia became already in the 2000s a testing ground for Russian hybrid warfare strategies later seen elsewhere in Europe like in Ukraine 2014, what has kept the protest movement alive despite growing repression, and why the struggle over Georgia is about much more than one country’s domestic politics. The episode also raises a broader question for Europe: how seriously is the European Union prepared to defend democratic forces in countries that are still fighting to become part of it?

Watch the ARTE documentary on the South Caucasus featuring Mariami: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/122762-008-A/tracks-east/

Follow Mariami on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meomari_japara/

Thumbnail Picture shot by Tornike Shengelia

In the 21st episode of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Paul Bekaert, co-host of EU Made Simple and a former Goldmann Sachs analyst who now writes about European economics and finance on his Substack.

The conversation focus on a the topic, that today is under-discussed in the pro-European space: money. Paul explains how Europe and the United States shared a similar financial trajectory until 2008, and how the divergent regulatory responses to the great financial crsis crash left European banks constrained, European capital fragmented and European companies subsidised rather than restructured. The discussion focuses especially on liquidity — why European exchanges, clearing houses and derivatives markets remain split across national lines, why so few companies choose to IPO in Europe, and why the money that could fund European growth ends up on the Nasdaq in the United States instead.

Paul makes the case for Eurobonds, drawing on a proposal by Olivier Blanchard (PIIE) and Ángel Ubide (Citadel) on issuing joint European debt to buy back national debt, with each member state liable for its own share. The result would be lower interest rates across high-debt and low-debt countries alike, and — more importantly — a genuine European bond market that creates the fiscal space to invest in the sectors where Europe has fallen behind.

The two also discuss the German industrial crisis and the failure to embrace creative destruction, the French deficit and the limits of a growth model that ended in the 1990s, the brain drain of Europe’s most ambitious graduates to London and New York, and the cultural difference between a continent that prizes humility about work and one that rewards visible ambition.

Check out Paul’s Substack:

If you are interested in this episodes topics, you can learn more especially in this articles:

* https://bekaert.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-non-europe

* ⁠https://bekaert.substack.com/p/the-solution-to-all-of-europes-economic

* ⁠https://bekaert.substack.com/p/what-are-blue-bonds

About The European Republic

How do we build a united Europe that can defend itself, govern itself and shape the world? The European Republic Podcast aims to bring Europeans together and to explore how Europe can become a sovereign democratic power; economically, militarily, technologically and culturally.

Our host is the philosopher Nikodem Skrobisz. He discusses with guests from across the continent Paneuropeanism / European Federalism, the European Union, the challenges European Democracy and Institutions face and how we can make Europe more united, prosperous and free.

Substack: https://nikodemskrobisz.substack.com

In Episode 20 of The European Republic, Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Dr. Benjamin Wolba, co-founder of the European Defense Tech Hub (EDTH), one of Europe’s largest and fastest-growing defence innovation networks.

Benjamin says he came to defence almost by accident. A theoretical physicist who founded a publishing house and later worked in venture capital, he belonged to a generation in Germany raised to believe that history had ended and that war was a thing of the past. In 2024, he and his co-founder Jonathan organised a defence-tech hackathon in Munich as a one-off. Two years later, EDTH has grown into an international network running dozens of hackathons and expanding also outside Europe to allied democracies like Australia, Taiwan, Canada and Japan.

Tune in to hear what Benjamin has learned from building EDTH across Europe and Ukraine, what makes defence innovation actually work in the real world, and why he believes Europe has an enormous opportunity to build a faster, more ambitious and globally competitive defence ecosystem. We also explore how the funnel from hackathons to startups to deployed tech works; and about the new generation of founders reshaping European defense. Also: How the battlefield of the future might look like, where the most exciting innovations are emerging, and how anyone with the right ideas and skills can help shape it.

Ben’s website: https://benjaminwolba.com/

Sign up to the EDTH Festival in Berlin August 2026: https://eurodefense.tech/festival/

The upcoming Hackathons by the EDTH: https://events.eurodefense.tech/

In the 19th episode of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Felix Hosse, entrepreneur, long-time liberty activist and CEO of Push To Leave. Push To Leave is an app that lets you as a consumer scan a barcode and instantly see whether the company behind the product is still doing business in or with Russia. Felix left Germany for Kyiv, where he now lives and works, and his organisation was placed on Russia’s list of “undesirable organisations” in December 2025.

In the episode we discuss how his approach works, how aggregated boycott data moves the burden of proof, so that companies must justify staying in Russia rather than justify leaving. Felix argues that the wave of corporate exits from Russia is not over, that firms still betting on a post-war return are underestimating the risk of expropriation.

The second half turns to culture and self-understanding. Nikodem and Felix discuss why German and Polish readings of Russia diverge so sharply, why hierarchy and humiliation explain more about Russian strategy than Western cost-benefit logic does, and how Soviet legacies still shape post-communist societies.

Felix also tells the story of his own path from Students for Liberty to founding a think tank, to aid convoys in 2022, to building software in Kyiv — including an approach from RT Germany, and a visit to the Irpin and Bucha cemetery that he describes as the experience that changed everything.

Push To Leave: https://www.pushtoleave.org/

Felix Hosse: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felix-hosse/

In this 18th episode of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Bruno Topiński, chairman of Astra Poland / Astra Europa Polska, about why the case for European federalism looks different when it is made from Warsaw rather than Berlin or Paris.

Topiński argues that he belongs to a generation that did not need an Erasmus year to feel European, and that Poland’s transformation over the past three decades is inseparable from its European integration. But he also pushes back on the idea that Poland is drifting away from Europe: support for EU membership, he says, has remained remarkably stable since the accession referendum. What Poland is contesting, in his view, is not integration itself but the terms on which it happens. National sovereignty for a mid-sized European state is an illusion in a world of competing hegemonies. Squeezed between Russian imperialism, an increasingly transactional United States, Chinese economic pressure and hostile theocratic regimes and rising Islamism, Poland cannot secure itself alone.

Topiński also explains why he co-founded with Astra Europa a new federalist organisation rather than joining Volt, why he believes federalism must stop being a partisan project of the political left, and how Astra Poland plans to force every Polish candidate to declare a position on European integration ahead of 2029. The episode closes on Polish party fragmentation, the weakness of pro-European civil society, and his argument that federalism will be won locally before it is won in any parliament.

Learn more about Astra Poland: https://astraeuropa.pl/

Learn more about Astra Europa: https://astraeuropa.eu/

Follow Bruno on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bruno_topinski/

Follow Bruno on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@bruno_topinski

Follow Bruno on X: https://x.com/Bruno_Topinski

In episode 17 of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Maciej Tadeusiak, Co-President of Volt Polska and member of Volt Europa’s European expansion team, who has helped set up seven new chapters across the continent. Maciej shares how he got into European politics, why he believes a pan-European party can become a machine for winning elections, and what it takes to build a political organization in a post-communist society where 99 percent of voters have never heard of you. The conversation explores the chicken-and-egg problem of political visibility, why Poles are far less conservative than their own politicians assume, and how Volt positions itself as pragmatic and evidence-based rather than left-wing. Maciej also lays out the road ahead: entering the 2027 Polish parliamentary elections, preparing for the 2029 European elections, and his fifty-year vision of a European Federation with pooled defense procurement, a unified research budget, and a Union that puts citizens before corporations.

Learn more about Volt in Poland: https://voltpolska.org/

In episode 16 of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz talks with Geza, the Roman reenactor, austrian officer, living history artist, and musician known across Instagram and TikTok as The Age of Constantine. Wearing an authentically reconstructed tunic of late antiquity, Geza explains the difference between reenactment and living history, and why he consciously chooses to live as a Roman in the 21st century. The conversation dives deep into what he calls the Roman cultural matrix: a model of universalism, syncretism, and layered identities that once united the entire Mediterranean, and that Europe, he argues, is unconsciously rebuilding today. Geza shares his personal journey to convinced European, and tells moving stories of how the shared Roman heritage helps people from Tunisia to Taiwan find their place in Europe, offering a fresh perspective on integration and identity. From there, the discussion turns geopolitical: Europe as an emerging empire in the original Roman sense of imperium, America cast in the role of Carthage, and the question of how Europe can emancipate itself militarily and financially. Drawing on more than two decades as an officer in the Austrian armed forces, Geza outlines a concrete vision for a European army inspired by the French Foreign Legion, and reflects on virtue, competence, and purpose as the cultural foundations Europe must reclaim. Finally, he presents his most ambitious project yet: circumnavigating the entire 16,000-kilometer frontier of the Roman Empire on foot, on horseback, and by reconstructed ancient ship, as a living manifestation of the idea that the Euro-Mediterranean space belongs together.Follow Géza on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theageofconstantine/ Support Géza circumnavigating the Roman empire by historic means: https://www.gofundme.com/f/circumnavigating-the-roman-empire-historically

In this episode of The European Republic, our host Nikodem Skrobisz speaks with Ulyana Bakhtsizina, the newly elected Co-President of Volt Polska and organizer of We Are Europe in Poland. Ulyana shares her unusual path from physics into politics, and how her Polish-Belarusian background and proximity to Russian imperialism shaped her commitment to European federalism and democracy.

Together they explore the paradox at the heart of Polish politics: a country that has benefited enormously from EU membership, where around 80 percent of citizens say they support the Union, yet whose entire political landscape is drifting towards Euroscepticism and sovereignist rhetoric. Ulyana explains why Polish support for the EU is often described as wide but shallow, how Law and Justice spent a decade framing Brussels as a threat to national sovereignty, and why pro-European forces made a strategic mistake by neglecting smaller towns and eastern regions.

The conversation also covers the rural-urban divide visible in the last presidential election, the role of Russian propaganda and collective memory in fueling anti-EU sentiment, and how the concept of shared European sovereignty can answer Poland’s historically rooted fear of losing independence. Ulyana presents Volt Polska’s vision of a United States of Europe with a common army, common migration policy, and deeper integration, discusses whether Volt Polska will run in elections, and introduces the European Citizens’ Initiative to stop funding Russia’s war machine by phasing out EU imports from Russia.

Learn more about Volt Polska: https://voltpolska.orgSign the European Citizens’ Initiative: stopfundingrussianwar.com/sign.htmlUlyana on Instagram: moving.europe

Ulyana on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ulyana-juliana-bakhtsizina-718088263/

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