The centerpiece of this visit was the event “Scaling Europe Summit 2026,” where T. Okmanas invited other European startup founders and high-ranking EU representatives for a discussion.
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Among the key agenda points of the visit were separate meetings with the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Technology Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, the Commissioner for Economy Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas, the Director-General of the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) Roberto Viola, and the Head of Cabinet of the European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva, Andreas Schwarz.
The main message of these meetings and T. Okman’s speech at the “Scaling Europe Summit” event was the necessity to create equal playing rules for European and US or Asian technology companies and to promote open, constructive dialogue between business and policymakers.
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“Lithuania is a basketball country, and the best NBA players today are Europeans. If the European Union team played against the US, we would have great chances to win. However, in the field of technology and business, the situation is as if the hands of the European team coaches and staff were tied – we are subject to completely different, stricter rules than competitors from the US or China. Although the talent, scientists, and innovators are here, creating a global business from Europe is incomparably harder. We do not need special conditions – we need equal playing rules to compete on equal terms globally,” said Tomas Okmanas.
During the visit, great attention was also paid to cybersecurity, which in the current geopolitical context is becoming an integral part of national and economic security. According to T. Okmanas, Europe must take leadership in this area, and state institutions should cooperate more actively with businesses developing cybersecurity solutions.
“Today, everything falls under cybersecurity. Businesses already understand the risks and invest intensively in their protection, but ordinary users are often left alone, although the state should also care for them. In the US, it is completely normal for business leaders and politicians to sit at the same table to find the best solutions. In Europe, such dialogue is sometimes still met with suspicion. We must change this attitude – open cooperation is the only way to ensure resilience against increasingly frequent hybrid attacks and data theft,” emphasized the co-founder of Nord Security.
Although European startup founders are often encouraged to move to Silicon Valley, T. Okmanas emphasized a conscious decision to grow a global business from Lithuania, where a team of several thousand talents is currently assembled.
Active engagement in international dialogue in Brussels is a new but purposeful step for the company in representing not only its own but also the interests of the entire Lithuanian and regional business ecosystem, aiming for the European digital market to become a place where innovations not only are born but also successfully grow on a global scale.
