A comment by Jan Nintemann, TransformIT Europe & long-time organizer of the IFA Reseller Park Berlin, and Jochen Siegle.
Photo: MediaMarkt
A Continent without Courage for the Future
What reads today in the Tagesschau’s economic news like an ordinary stock market deal is, in reality, another low point in European industrial policy. With the planned takeover of Ceconomy – i.e., MediaMarkt and Saturn – by the Chinese tech giant JD.com, we are not just selling a retail chain. We are selling a piece of European self-determination in the digital consumer age.
While China, the USA, or South Korea specifically invest in their trade and technology giants, we in Europe regularly capitulate before our own potential.
MediaMarkt and Saturn – once a symbol of a modern, Europe-wide networked consumer electronics culture – are now celebrated as spoils because “access to supply chains and technology” is promised.
Honestly, that is bitter. Because what we are truly experiencing is not a “strengthening of European trade”, but the handover of key control over a billion-euro market to a foreign system that does not share our values – neither in terms of data ethics nor competitive fairness.
We are the Fools – Because We Don’t Create, We Sell
Where are the European answers to Amazon, JD.com, or Alibaba? Where is the digital courage, the power for entrepreneurial vision? Instead of building our own platforms, data, and supply chain innovations, we prefer to sell ourselves out and cheer over a few percentage points of stock market gains. With all due respect: That is entrepreneurial self-deception.
What We Need is a European Trade Plan – not a Fire Sale
The sale of MediaMarktSaturn to JD.com is a symptom – of a lack of industrial policy strategy, of a sick financial capitalism that values short-term margins higher than long-term independence.
We need a European “Digital Industrial Act” that systematically promotes investments in retail tech, European platforms, fair supply chains, and sustainable business models.
Our Appeal: Europe, Wake up!
It’s not enough to talk about “strategic autonomy” – we must finally put it into practice. Otherwise, we will soon not only be without our own semiconductors, without our own AI infrastructure, and without cloud platforms, but also without trade competence.
MediaMarkt was once Europe’s showcase for innovation. Now it is becoming a showcase of Chinese dominance. That is sad – and could have been avoided.
In the entire trade landscape within the EU, there is a lack of a powerful EU headquarters for trade associations, which (still far too EU-hesitant) operate almost entirely on their own in their respective countries – while almost all larger manufacturers operate internationally, mostly worldwide.
This also concerns the EU industry umbrella organizations, which often maintain only a powerless communication office, or even just letterbox offices, in Brussels. Yet, networked and cross-sector communicating business associations in Brussels, with over 2,200 umbrella organizations (more than in any other city in the world), would offer excellent opportunities, in cooperation with the EU Commission, to advance the protection of European companies’ interests against unfair practices by large investors from non-democratic countries.
TransformIT Europe is intended to be the first cross-sector pan-European GreenTech fair and communication platform that can tackle the strengthening and further development of European companies and put a stop to aggressive and inappropriate influence from non-European economic groups.
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