The issues are many and they are often at odds with other things, like 'quality of life'. From lack of large centres of innovation, not quite the right immigration system and attitudes towards migrants, a lack of hyper competitive attitude towards business (easy to see how this could be corrosive from another perspective), taxation and payroll taxes / inability to let people go (i.e. France), really closed business systems all over Europe, smaller markets, lack of risk taking everywhere from buyers, to investors, lack of big, cash-flush acquirers like Oracle, MS, etc. that eat up a lot of startups, a lack of 'flexible 1->n workforce' - ie the kinds of staffers that know how to go with a growing company and help it get established (this is a big ingredient of 'secondary domain knowledge' missing everywhere outside the Valley), to more sophisticated kinds of financing, and finally even just the right cooperative kind of attitude. Despite the competitiveness, there is definitely a 'goodwill' in the Valley that doesn't exist in most parts of the world.
Elk would be much better in trying to help Europe understand and overcome structural limitations because they already have the money.