Remember this is just one conference. This is not a top–down imposition of a new European world order. While the amount of policy discussion is quite high — out of necessity now — and EU representatives attend — this event is still a lot of developers coming together.

This is also why the EU has a hard time. America prefers the capitalist model. EU is trying to find ways encourage individual developers each with their own interests to contribute to shared European goals (which the devs also share but might not find interesting), and they're trying to do this without directly saying "you there, go and do this", and that's harder than herding cats.

For instance they do it through NLNET funding. Devs can propose projects and the ones the EU wants to fund will receive funding. It's a roundabout way to do things. Let's see if it pays off.