Overview
- Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Emmanuel Macron closed the Berlin meeting by urging Europe to cut reliance on U.S. and Chinese tech and to build capabilities in AI, cloud and critical infrastructure.
- Organizers and companies announced 18 new AI partnerships worth roughly €1 billion through the EU AI Champions Initiative, including SAP’s tie‑up with Mistral AI, Allianz’s work with Parloa, SAP’s resilience pact with Bleu, and deployments at defense firm Helsing.
- Infrastructure plans featured prominently, led by the Schwarz Group’s €11 billion data‑center project in Lübbenau as part of bids for EU‑backed KI “gigafactories.”
- Policy moves included Germany positioning the state as an anchor customer for European providers, joint German‑French procurement criteria for sovereign services, expanded use of open‑source suites such as OpenDesk and La Suite, and progress on an EU digital wallet.
- EU Commissioner Henna Virkkunen signaled a rulebook overhaul to simplify data and AI obligations and said Brussels is examining stricter competition oversight of cloud giants like Amazon and Microsoft, while France pressed for preference in public tenders and Germany urged caution about protectionism.