Overview

• The European Commission’s Apply AI package allocates €1 billion from Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe programme, with the aim of catalysing matching national and private investment.
• The strategy targets 11 sectors, including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri‑food, defence, communications and culture.
• Measures include a Frontier AI Initiative with competitions to develop open models that receive free access to EU supercomputers, plus oversight through a new AI Observatory and an Apply AI Alliance.
• Planned deployments span AI-powered screening centres in health, agentic AI for manufacturing and climate use cases, acceleration pipelines from labs to factories, city testbeds for autonomous vehicles and a farmer-focused app store.
• EU officials cite low enterprise uptake—less than 14% of firms used AI last year—and industry voices welcome the push but question missing implementation details and the scale of financing required.