While I agree with the opinion of the article, the content is quite superficial. Some things that arent mentioned could have a much bigger impact in the long run than some school programming project in Estonia: - The European Venture Capital Funds Regulation being finalised this year - The agreed enddate for SEPA, the harmonization of all European Payment Infrastructures being set for 2014...

Especially in the area of mobile payments I see a huge market potential because of the unique structure of the EU. If you travel through Northern Europe for example, you have the Euro in Finland, the Danish Krone in Denmark which is pegged to the Euro and then the Swedish Krone and the Norwegian Krone... A mobile app that would allow you to pay anything directly in Euros without having to convert into local currencies all the time would have huge value for the tourists - and the people selling stuff to them as well. With harmonized payment infrastructures and harmonized legal regimes this should be trivial to implement...