Fouquet is a figure to whom senior government officials and tech executives open their doors. Last month he met U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and he recently spoke with Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Asked if he has European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s phone number, he chuckled and said they “talked recently.”
And yet, Fouquet’s comments — delivered in an exclusive interview with POLITICO in his company’s offices, where construction cranes are busy with yet another expansion — expose a deepening rift between Brussels and Europe’s industrial champions. The EU wants to regulate and subsidize its way to AI relevance, but ASML’s boss says the bloc is creating obstacles for companies before it has created the demand for AI applications that would make Europe competitive.
That weakness is visible in ASML’s own books: 99 percent of the company’s machine sales come from outside Europe, Fouquet said, a striking figure for a company based in the Netherlands and central to the global AI supply chain.
He pointed in particular to the EU’s AI Act — the bloc’s landmark rulebook for the technology — as an example of Brussels setting boundaries before European companies had built strong AI products of their own.
“We didn’t start running, we didn’t start even walking, and we already had in front of us all the obstacles to not be able to make even the first step,” Fouquet added, arguing that this was “not serving the industry.”
The criticism lands after months of pressure from Europe’s largest companies to soften the AI Act. In early May, ASML joined Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral, Nokia, SAP and Siemens in warning von der Leyen that the legislation risks hobbling European companies before they can compete with U.S. and Chinese rivals.