BRUSSELS — Europe should “sober up” in its quest for tech sovereignty and accept that “certain trains have left the station,” conservative Bulgarian lawmaker Eva Maydell told POLITICO’s AI and Tech Summit Tuesday.
European institutions have been trying to foster the buildup of tech capacity in sectors ranging from artificial intelligence to cloud computing amid concerns about dependency on the United States and other global powers.
“We need to have a very clear outline plan which, first and foremost, assesses where our strengths are, where we have certain dependencies, and where we need to cooperate,” said Maydell.
“If we look at the priorities” of the Commission, “there is so much,” she said. The Commission is working on a wide range of initiatives from making Europe an AI Continent and the best place to grow startups, to backing quantum computing, biotech and connectivity.
Maydell said the EU should “identify the few big ideas that can propel our economic and industrial base,” suggesting a focus on two or three initiatives since “less is more.”
“We have limited resources. There are various priorities. For us in this room, tech is the priority. In another room down the road, defense is the priority,” she said.
EU institutions should also not pick companies to champion, instead leaving it up to markets to decide which firms survive, Maydell said.
Speaking on the same panel, which focused on how to build out Europe’s AI capacities, Irish independent MEP Michael McNamara stressed that most of the funds going into tech investment are still private.
As well as the availability of financing, the discussion between Maydell, McNamara, Amazon’s public policy director Yohann Bernard and Bertin Martens, senior fellow at Bruegel, also cited energy prices and a lack of tech talent as limiting Europe’s progress.
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