There are places with the same entrepreneurial drive that are part of the EU. But look at an LP-facing deck for a VC fund in Europe, and I can't recall ever seeing an investment with a little flag of Poland.

My belief is the underlying dynamics are less about, generalizing about cultures. Like you're right that that's what US VCs say, and collective belief is truth in markets even if it is not truth in reality. The bigger factor is EU, meaning French, Dutch, German, Swiss and Italian capital, are concentrated into the hands of large, opaque family trusts, structured primarily around tax evasion first and foremost, and other feudal issues, rather than minimizing the downsides of real risk or whatever, and that feudal stuff means, why do early stage investing? Without that there's little innovation. Hence Mistral, a growth stage company that everyone is happy making the growth stage, "dot AI" and "dot EU" winner. Presumably for EU sovereign wealth to be forced to buy.