Redirecting Europe’s AI Industrial Policy From Competitiveness to Public Interest

Europe’s nascent industrial policy on AI is gaining steady momentum, potentially allocating significant public and private funds and shaping regulatory actions in ways that will set the trajectory for years to come. This effort needs urgent public scrutiny. That is where this report intervenes: to ask hard questions of how resources are allocated, the process by which priorities will be decided, and most fundamentally, to examine the premises underlying its vision. What kind of (digital) future does Europe want? What role can, and should, AI technologies play? And who will have a say in determining these answers? Rather than accept the narrow and poorly defined motivations of competitiveness and sovereignty that dominate conversations about AI, the authors in this collection redirect towards alternative pathways for Europe’s AI industrial policy – challenging concentrated power in the tech industry rather than entrenching it, and foregrounding benefit to the public and the planet.