As the return of power-based geopolitics exposes Europe’s structural vulnerabilities, a single question increasingly underpins the EU’s competitiveness, strategic autonomy and security agenda: who owns Europe’s productive assets? In this policy paper, Kosta Juri argues that genuine, sustainable competitiveness depends on ownership — and that as strategic technologies, start-ups and local SMEs fall under external control, often via US-based asset managers and private equity firms, Europe risks losing not only its ability to compete but also its ability to control its own destiny. The paper makes the case for two practical, market-friendly tools to ensure European businesses remain European: employee share ownership schemes (ESOPs), which enable workers to buy out retiring owners and address the looming succession crisis, and steward ownership, which separates control from profit to safeguard a company’s long-term mission. Citing emerging models in Slovenia, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, it argues that these models should be placed at the heart of the EU’s 28th Regime for Innovative Companies — and sets out concrete steps, ranging from a harmonising directive to dedicated financial instruments, that the EU should take without delay.