What definitely does is that the major European server providers tend to be located in one of those two countries (like OVH or Hetzner). Note that server location != user location, users could be anywhere in Europe without a noticeable latency.

Doesn't make any sense for me to pay for a server located in my country when I can find one in Germany with an order of magnitude better performance for the price.

They lead many tech stats per capita. Another example is the amount of French and German wikipedia pages, patents, research, internet penetration, renewable energy …

A shame that the focus on car manufacturing for so long cannibalised the software business. I think it could have been a software powerhouse, but was/is not focussing at all on it outside of some shining outliers.