Having been to a few tech conferences held by the EU commission, I would say the issue is not (wholly) to it being too open. The biggest problem with the EU is

Having been to a few tech conferences held by the EU commission, I would say the issue is not (wholly) to it being too open. The biggest problem with the EU is that it is ultimately 27 sovereign states with different language and cultures and very different economic situations. What the EU tries to do is to bring these 27 states closer by awarding grants based on cross-border collaborations (so company A in France needs to collaborate with company B in Italy) and also helping the poorer states. This is a very rigid process, hence I guess this is why we've not seen much success stories so far.