The writer is Greece's finance minister and president of the Eurogroup. As the EU debates its next shared budget, one assumption has gone largely unchallenged: that despite Europe's expanding ambitions, its resources are fixed. Defence, AI and the green transition all require greater investment. Europe's greatest advances have rarely come from redistributing wealth but from creating it. The single market enlarged the European economy. The euro deepened financial integration. Rather than asking only where Europe can find new revenues, we should ask whether Europe already owns strategic assets whose value could be multiplied through deeper integration. One such asset is radio spectrum.

Every AI application, connected factory and digital public service ultimately depends on it. Yet despite building a single market for goods, services, capital and people, the EU continues to organise one of its most strategic economic resources through 27 separate licensing regimes. This fragmentation raises regulatory uncertainty, increases the cost of capital, complicates long-term investment planning and delays network deployment. The transition from 5G to 6G offers a rare opportunity to correct this. Over the coming years, the principal 5G spectrum bands will progressively require renewal across Europe. At the same time, the Upper 6 GHz band (6425–7125 MHz) has not yet been allocated.

Rather than having 27 independent licensing exercises, Europe should establish a European Spectrum Union. Spectrum would remain the property of member states and existing licences would be fully respected until their expiry. Future strategic spectrum is allocated within a European framework, with co-ordinated renewal calendars, harmonised licence conditions and common technical and security standards. The economic gains would be large: greater regulatory certainty, improved long-term investment planning, reduced financing costs and faster deployment of 6G networks.

There is a second dividend. Spectrum allocations generate public revenues that today accrue almost entirely to national budgets. In an EU Spectrum Union, although member states could decide to retain part of the proceeds, the goal should be to channel up to 75 per cent of future revenues into the EU budget as a new own resource, with the remaining 25 per cent capitalising a European Investment Bank connectivity and technology facility. Because the EIB can leverage its capital through market borrowing, that quarter of the proceeds could support investment well beyond its nominal value, financing AI infrastructure, quantum technologies and new digital networks.