Berlin (AFP) – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron vowed Tuesday to help Europe catch up in the AI race and unshackle the continent from a heavy reliance on US tech titans. Speaking at a Berlin summit attended by regional tech firms and investors, the leaders of Europe’s biggest economies also backed the EU’s expected rollback of digital rules that many firms complain are holding them back. European companies pledged more than 12 billion euros ($13.9 billion euros) investment in the digital sector at the event, according to Merz, as the continent seeks to catch up with the United States and China in the AI race.
“Europe doesn’t want to be the client of the big entrepreneurs or the big solutions being provided either from the US or from China, we clearly want to design our own solutions,” Macron said, adding that this stance represented “a refusal of being a vassal”. Merz called for Europe to “join forces and forge its own digital path — and this path must lead to digital sovereignty”. “Digital sovereignty has costs, but the costs of digital dependence are even higher,” said the chancellor.
– Uneasy US ties –
Europe is responding to calls to blaze its own digital path as concerns escalate about US tech dominance at a time of increasingly uneasy ties with Washington under the “America First” administration of Donald Trump. Despite the US-Europe tensions, a senior official from the French presidency earlier said the summit was not about “confrontation” with the United States or even China, but rather protecting “our core sovereignty”.
Amid concerns that onerous rules are hobbling European tech firms, France and Germany stated they are pushing for a “simple, innovation-friendly and competitive EU regulatory framework”, according to a statement from Berlin after the summit. They are calling specifically for a 12-month postponement for parts of the EU’s AI law, and simplifications of the bloc’s flagship data protection rules, it said. The EU is expected to propose a rollback in these areas Wednesday — a move welcomed by businesses, but criticized by privacy advocates. Macron also urged preference to be given to European tech companies when handing out contracts, particularly from the public sector. “Because guess what? The Chinese have a Chinese exclusivity … and the Americans have a very strong American preference,” he said.
– Sensitive data –
Calls have been growing for European firms to be more often given the job of handling sensitive data of the region’s citizens, rather than handing it to foreign cloud computing giants. Earlier at the summit, the EU’s digital chief announced that Amazon and Microsoft cloud services could face stricter competition rules in the bloc as Brussels probes their market power. Digital ministers from across Europe, as well as CEOs of tech firms like France’s Mistral and Germany’s SAP, took part in the summit.
A total of 18 new partnerships between companies and the AI sector were unveiled at the summit, according to an EU initiative for promoting the technology. This ranged from a tie-up between SAP and Mistral on providing “sovereign” services, to deals involving carmaker Mercedes-Benz and insurer Allianz, it said. As well as worrying about US dependence, Europe has long-standing concerns about reliance on firms in China and other parts of Asia for hardware, from semiconductors to laptop components.
But the continent faces an uphill battle to switch supply chains from foreign companies in the digital realm. The region is struggling after a period of prolonged economic weakness, and its tech firms remain far smaller than their US rivals. As of last year, the continent’s data centres — crucial for AI — had computing capacity of just 16 gigawatts, compared with 48 in the US and 38 in China, according to a recent study by German digital business association Bitkom.
But SAP CEO Christian Klein struck an upbeat note. “We have our own industries that we are good at,” he said during a panel at the summit. “Let’s apply AI in these battlegrounds, then Europe has a bright future.”
© 2024 AFP
