EU pushes new AI strategy to reduce tech reliance on US and China

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The EU must promote homegrown artificial intelligence platforms and decrease its reliance on foreign providers, Brussels has said, as it prepares to set out a new plan to compete against the US and China in the global race for the revolutionary technology.

According to a draft proposal seen by the Financial Times, the European Commission’s new “Apply AI strategy” will promote European-made AI tools to provide security and resilience while boosting the bloc’s industrial competitiveness. The strategy highlights the need to improve AI usage in sectors including healthcare, defence and manufacturing.

The Commission aims to “strengthen EU AI sovereignty” by accelerating the development and use of homemade artificial intelligence technologies, including policies to “accelerate the adoption of European scalable and replicable generative AI solutions in public administrations”, the draft says.

The strategy, which could change before it is made public, is set to be presented by the EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen on Tuesday.

It warns of “external dependencies of the AI stack” — the infrastructure and software needed to build, train and manage AI applications — which it says “can be weaponised” by both “state and non-state actors”, posing a risk to supply chains.

Such concerns have risen since Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency, which has sparked widespread concerns about the bloc’s reliance on American tech and calls for digital independence in Europe.

Meanwhile, China is challenging the US as a global leader in AI development, stoking fears that Europe may have little influence over future use of the technology.

In recent years, Europe has become home to a number of promising AI companies, from French model maker Mistral to German defence tech group Helsing. But the EU still relies on the US and Asia for much of the software, hardware and critical minerals needed to develop AI.

According to the draft, public administrations have a central role to play to “help AI start-ups grow through increased demand for European-made open source AI solutions”.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at an event on Friday that the bloc wants to “speed up AI adoption across the board” via the Apply AI strategy in order to ensure that Europe doesn’t miss out on the new technology.

Brussels wants to position AI not merely as a productivity tool, but as a “strategic asset” that must be tightly integrated into the EU’s institutional, industrial and security systems.

To implement the actions in the strategy, such as supporting AI adoption in manufacturing and the health sector, the commission is mobilising €1bn from existing financing programmes.

The bloc also wants to prioritise implementation of European AI-enabled tools in defence, as European capitals rapidly increase their defence spending in response to the threat from Russia and fears of US disengagement from European security under Trump.

Brussels plans to “accelerate the development and deployment of European AI-enabled” command and control (C2) capacities.

C2 systems, which are used to instruct troops and manage battlefield operations, are one of the so-called critical enablers that European militaries currently rely heavily on the US to provide through Nato.

The Commission also wants to “support the development of sovereign frontier models” for space defence technology.