Their biggest tech companies are Spotify and Skype. That's pretty underwhelming given that Spotify's biggest innovations are in product development and Skype became a subsidiary of an American company within 2 years of its existence.
Additionally, the 2 companies that seem to have industry tech talent: UK and Sweden, are not part of this deal.
The tech scene in mainland Europe operates completely differently from what you might be used to from Silicon Valley, but there is lots of stuff going on. If you only look at the European car manufactures and the endless amount of small-to-medium sized businesses involved in the supply chain. Lots of stuff going on.
If the criteria of tech innovation is a cloud-based xAAS then the list will be unfortunately short.
The semiconductor push was really expected for a longer time already and is (I think) obviously part of the aspirations in the strategic autonomy continuum. If the roles were reversed, that is, EU with some Asian countries owned and controlled the majority of all chip fabrication, it would make perfect sense for USA to start chip production of its own on its own soil.
25% of the worlds research is done in the EU and a lot of that leads to something. Sounds to me like you look for software for the average Windows user only. ESA and CERN alone leads to huge innovations.
It was the first practical videocall software and pioniered the niche. It did more to improve my life than all social networks combined. I backed it with hard cash, paying for Skype premium or whatever it was called.
Then in 2011 MS bought it, and best as I can tell, has delivered no real improvement for the consumer.
The client was rewritten twice, now it's in JS, glitchy, slower and serves adds.
I think the world would have been better off with independant Skype, Zoom should have never become a thing.