By Michel Rose and Florence LoevePARIS (Reuters) -Dutch chip-equipment maker ASML's 1.3 billion euro ($1.5 billion) investment in French startup Mistral AI could be the start of more consolidation in the fragmented European tech ecosystem, former French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said. Le Maire, who left French politics in July last year after President Emmanuel Macron's shock decision to call snap elections, is now a strategic adviser to ASML, which this month became Mistral's top shareholder. "Our ambition is to unite players from this ecosystem to ensure the power of European technology can rival that of Chinese and American technology," Le Maire told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. Le Maire said Europe had "all the industries and the know-how" to become an AI power in the next decades if it overcomes fragmentation. Le Maire said the European Commission was too passive in the face of aggressive Chinese and American competition.