Europe Must Invest in Artificial Intelligence

Europe cannot afford to become the continent that writes rules for technologies built elsewhere. Responsible AI and ethics matter, but they cannot substitute for industrial policy. We should spend less on overlapping bureaucracy, committees, and slow procedures, and far more on fundamental research, compute infrastructure, energy, semiconductors, open datasets, competitive salaries, and capital for companies that need to scale.

Through InvestAI, the European Commission plans to mobilise €200 billion, establish at least 19 AI factories, and finance up to five AI gigafactories. This is the right direction, but mobilising capital is not the same as turning it into GPUs, laboratories, models, and products. The European Court of Auditors found that earlier EU actions had limited effects and did not accelerate AI investment in line with global leaders.

Without independent capacity, Europe will remain heavily dependent on American companies for models, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and development tools. This is not only an economic weakness. It means allowing external companies to determine prices, access conditions, and an increasing share of the infrastructure through which Europeans work, conduct research, and make decisions.

Safety should be embedded in engineering, not used as a reason to postpone engineering. If AI systems continue to advance rapidly, the gap will become much harder and more expensive to close. Europe must invest now and at a radically greater scale. Otherwise, it risks becoming cautious on paper and irrelevant in practice.