It's not just that there are few signals to prevent the wrong person being put in charge, but this kind of government bureaucratic actively selects for the wrong person. These kinds of government IT projects are often soul sucking to work on, and so they attract a specific kind of applicant.

It's not only that, they would prefer to give a ton of money to a single entity with "market experience" and all the paperwork that looks good already existing. It would work better if it was lots of small amounts of money to individuals with good "business" (think about workplan, expected value and other stuff) but without paperwork - think a kid that just finished studies or a person that acquired experience freelancing and has an interesting business idea but not the money to have the paperwork. Anyway, at least it's how I feel towards the SV "tech".

Sadly, our EU kids are more interested in being the next social media influencer or going on a world trip than grounding a business, because the paperwork and legal burden will age them faster than someone on drugs and will likely get them in hefty fine to bankruptcy due to that one arcane reporting requirement they missed about that €20/- to the tax office.

EU needs something akin to Stripe Atlas, but that is not what the politicians want because they want EU to be manufacturing industry only, you can always import tech from other places … <shaking head emoji here>