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Berlin Summit Pushes EU Digital Sovereignty as France Seeks AI Act Pause

Leaders cite U.S. tech dominance alongside renewed trade pressure from Washington.

Overview

  • Co-presided by France and Germany, the Berlin meeting gathers EU ministers, the European Commission and tech firms such as Mistral and SAP, with a joint Franco‑German declaration and business announcements expected.
  • Paris sets three priorities for the talks: simplify EU rules, protect sensitive data with European procurement preference, and channel major investment into AI, cloud and the broader tech value chain.
  • France backs a 12‑month postponement for parts of the AI Act and urges targeted GDPR changes to enable specific AI uses.
  • An open letter signed by more than 40 organisations, including Mozilla, Mistral AI, EleutherAI, Wikimedia and Red Hat, urges an open‑source path with five concrete measures.
  • Industry group Bitkom warns of a severe infrastructure gap, citing European data‑centre capacity of 16 GW versus 48 GW in the United States and 38 GW in China.