EU's von der Leyen invites scientists, researchers to make Europe their home

I don't think that is it. I think the employment law is written outside the context of how academic research is funded. Unlike companies, academic researchers cannot do something good and then have it generate revenue. You can not build an app and then support it and then use the profits to continue developing new ideas. You can only continue to apply for money to fund ideas. In companies that generate revenue, many countries require permanent positions and just cause for firings with the assumption that as long as there is revenue and profit, the company can't simply lay off people to generate more profit. However, since there is no revenue generation at a university, there is no way to continue to support people who work there beyond the grants that fund their positions. And there is no way to acquire those funds internally except by layoffs which are not allowed because universities will not layoff permanent people to save on money since those permanent people decide the layoffs anyways (who lays off themselves?). This is compounded that many countries have different retirement laws for older professors and they can often times take up departmental resources through emeritus positions that would otherwise go to fund young people seeking permanent positions.

I think that the solution is that university leadership should come from academic staff (e.g., a democratically elected faculty senate plus a rektor team as leader) and they decide layoffs so that administration can be laid off as well as academic teams. Second I think that there should be a reorganization of the university academic staff with responsibilities redistributed. Older professors should teach more and assume advisory positions instead of leadership ones in research projects, younger professors should not teach much at all and focus on driving research forward as research leaders, and there should be more focus on recruiting permanent technical staff to build larger teams at the expense of fewer PhD positions. And funding should change to have fewer grant funds and more long term funds that go towards institutions to build national lab like organizations across europe like there is in the USA, Germany with Helmholtz, etc. Of course this will all cost a lot of money and no one will do this. but i think without a reorg there will simply be more of the same and european innovation will continue to stagnate.

The fact only Ukraine is at war complicates things a bit - funding and the risk of creating secondary impacts are still an issue.

> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup?

No.

> biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business

For business you'll need to address differences in language and culture that are much, much deeper than the ones between the Bay Area and Itasca, TX (which claims to be the most conservative city of the state). Local legislation tends to be less of a problem here than the US though. YMMV.

> and talent

This one is less challenging. The company I work for has a 50/50 balance between "born Irish" and "new Irish" (such as me). Being remote-first is a huge helper.

> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird one nonetheless.

Almost none of these rules by itself is insurmountable[1]. But it all adds up friction in the workforce dynamic which might end up halting the company. And afterwards you will be unable to bankrupt the dead company specifically because of the social protections.

Or the sheer inability to fire a developer in Germany because laws here assume that the only work that exists is at a factory producing physical things. So hiring an intellectual worker becomes a huge commitment not to dissimilar to marriage and all of that doesn't help growing.

[1] A notorious exception perhaps would be the paid maternity leave, as fraud with this one is something that happens in real life and can be deadly to a micro startup at the earliest stage.

> I always thought the biggest hurdle to overcome here in the EU is despite advancements with the schengen zone is branching out to other countries for business and talent is still much more difficult than a Bay Area company wanting to expand to Texas for example.

Correct, because of the same bureaucracy.

In Poland it is easy as well.

And before... the process has been a nightmare for years - be it for H1-B, L1 or even O1 visas.

Unless this is a sarcasm, you have proven that either you are 150% disconnected from reality or is discounting the entire immigration hurdle and access to every basic necessity(bank, housing, healthcare, work permit, qualification recognition etc) requiring a valid ID.

The Slovak version: "Kde sa dvaja bijú, tretí víťazí."

"Where two fight, victory goes to third."