// NEWS //
European entrepreneurs face income fears, but it’ s not enough to tempt them towards employment
Motivations for independence tell a story of autonomy rather than obligation. The majority are attracted to entrepreneurship thanks to positive‘ pull’ factors – like work / life balance( 31 %), creative freedom( 31 %) or pursuit of a passion( 17 %).‘ Push’ factors are less common – 11 % cite economic necessity and 9 % recall negative past employer experiences as drivers. And even fewer are going independent in search of greater earning potential: just 4 % mention having reached a financial ceiling in traditional employment as a key motivation.
Qonto, one of Europe’ s leading business finance management solutions, has published its latest research into the experiences of European entrepreneurs. In collaboration with survey-makers, Appinio, Qonto canvassed 1,600 entrepreneurs across France, Germany, Italy and Spain in November to understand their motivations, the challenges they face, the support systems they lean on and what would improve their working lives.
And the findings uncover daily compromises being made: financial certainty traded in for better work / life balance and business creation stresses mitigated by the support of friends and families. But, despite 70 % of EU entrepreneurs finding business operations difficult, over 80 % have no plans to quit over the next year.
Perhaps appropriately for the country with the le droit à la déconnexion( right to disconnect), France is most likely to go independent in search of work / life balance( 36 %), while Germany is uniquely attracted by the idea of creative freedom( 37 %). Spain reveals itself to have the most pragmatic motivations: the highest sense of economic necessity at 17 %, paired with the lowest passion-led entrepreneurship at 9 %; almost half the EU average.
Anxiety around maintaining a regular income is the clear frontrunner when it comes to entrepreneurs’ money concerns: almost one-third( 30 %) of respondents say it’ s their biggest financial challenge. That’ s more than double any other issue, with technical concerns like managing personal vs. business finances( 12 %), understanding and optimising taxes( 11 %) and navigating compliance costs( 8 %) named as secondary worries.
European cloud providers launch initiative to bring 10,000 SMEs into trusted data spaces
European cloud providers, managed service providers and industry data spaces collaborating through the Data Space Adoption Forum announced a joint initiative to enable 10,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises to join trusted data spaces within the next 18 months.
The initiative introduces new open-source tools and a coordinated go-to-market strategy designed to remove the cost, time and technical barriers that have historically prevented SME participation at scale.
Trusted industry data spaces are increasingly essential for visibility, efficiency, innovation and sustainability across complex global value chains. Yet many SMEs, which form the backbone of sectors ranging from automotive to pharmaceuticals, struggle to engage due to high integration costs, limited specialist expertise and fragmented onboarding processes. In the automotive sector alone, more than 800,000 suppliers operate worldwide, the vast majority employing fewer than 250 people, underlining the scale of the challenge.
Members of the Data Space Adoption Forum have co-developed open-source software projects to address these barriers directly. At the core of the solution is a new multi-tenant architecture based on the Eclipse Dataspaces Components, combined with innovations in resource management and automated supplier onboarding. The technology enables Data Space Onboardingas-a-Service models delivered by cloud and managed service providers, significantly reducing complexity and cost.
By standardising onboarding and leveraging the reach of European cloud ecosystems, the initiative strengthens collaboration, supports regulatory compliance and enhances competitiveness across industries.
A pilot underway with Catena-X demonstrates the model’ s viability, with the approach designed to scale across multiple sectors and trusted data spaces globally.
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