The productivity gap is widening Europe needs talent now
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Experts often argue the problem is not just investment but execution capacity. The Commission’s plan tries to attack both at once. On the money side, Horizon Europe and Digital Europe are set to invest about €1 billion per year directly in AI, with a goal of mobilizing roughly €20 billion annually across the decade. The Recovery and Resilience Facility earmarks another €134 billion for the broader digital transition, which can power data, cloud, and compute upgrades across member states. On the execution side, the risk-based AI Act gives companies clarity with four tiers of risk and specific obligations for general-purpose AI models, so legal uncertainty does not become an excuse to pause innovation.
The contrast with the U.S. is still there. American tech giants, shaped by a culture of constant iteration, have turned adoption into a habit. Europe’s market is more fragmented, and many SMEs recognize the value of AI but struggle to find the budget or the people to make it stick. That is precisely where staff augmentation becomes practical rather than theoretical. Instead of waiting months to hire full-time specialists, a company can integrate senior software engineers, data professionals, or AI developers who plug into existing product teams, follow the client’s tooling and rituals, and deliver within the same sprint cadence. The result is speed without blowing up fixed costs, plus a smoother path from pilot to production.
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There is still time for Europe to catch up, and you can feel momentum building. The “Apply AI” strategy is designed to pull AI out of the lab and into hospitals, factories, public services, and small businesses, with the AI Office and the Service Desk smoothing the compliance path so teams keep moving. GenAI4EU is meant to connect cutting-edge startups with real implementers in industry and the public sector, which is exactly how adoption scales. Pair that with the investment firepower from the RRF and the dedicated lines in Horizon and Digital Europe, and the ingredients are there for a real push.
Now to the people part. Technologies evolve faster than local labor markets can retrain. Many European firms want to move but cannot find the right skills quickly enough, especially around modern data pipelines, MLOps, model governance, and secure integration with cloud services. Staff augmentation is not about hiring more bodies; it is about bringing the right capabilities, at the right moment, to move the roadmap forward with confidence. When this is done well, companies keep ownership of the backlog and IP, set clear acceptance criteria and security baselines from day one, and measure progress with plain engineering metrics like lead time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and time to restore. The external team becomes an extension of the in-house team, not a separate silo.
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This is where partners from Latin America can help. Nearshore teams with strong working English, overlapping time zones, and a culture of hands-on delivery can accelerate releases without the usual friction of far-flung time differences. You get senior people who are already fluent in CI/CD, automated testing, data privacy basics, and the emerging obligations around trustworthy AI, so projects move from “we should pilot this” to “we shipped it” faster and with fewer surprises.
Square Codex is one example of how this model works in practice. Based in Costa Rica and working with organizations in North America and Europe, we connect companies with senior talent in software development, AI, and data engineering, integrating directly into their tools and rituals so value shows up in the first sprints, not the fifth. The goal is simple. Help European firms match the ambition that Brussels is laying out with the talent and execution they need to make it real. Europe still has time to regain ground. The window will not stay open forever, but with clear rules, meaningful investment, and the right people on the field, it can move from plans and speeches to working systems that raise productivity where it actually counts.