{"id":89132,"date":"2026-05-22T03:19:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T03:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/89132\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T03:19:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T03:19:38","slug":"europes-top-tech-boss-warns-brussels-is-driving-ai-companies-away-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/89132\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s top tech boss warns Brussels is driving AI companies away\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> spoke with Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Asked if he has European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen\u2019s phone number, he chuckled and said they “talked recently.”<\/p>\n

And yet, Fouquet\u2019s comments \u2014 delivered in an exclusive interview with POLITICO in his company\u2019s offices, where construction cranes are busy with yet another expansion \u2014 expose a deepening rift between Brussels and Europe\u2019s industrial champions. The EU wants to regulate and subsidize its way to AI relevance, but ASML\u2019s boss says the bloc is creating obstacles for companies before it has created the demand for AI applications that would make Europe competitive.<\/p>\n

That weakness is visible in ASML\u2019s own books: 99 percent of the company\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He pointed in particular to the EU\u2019s AI Act<\/a> \u2014 the bloc\u2019s landmark rulebook for the technology \u2014 as an example of Brussels setting boundaries before European companies had built strong AI products of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t start running, we didn\u2019t start even walking, and we already had in front of us all the obstacles to not be able to make even the first step,\u201d Fouquet added, arguing that this was \u201cnot serving the industry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The criticism lands after months of pressure from Europe\u2019s largest companies to soften the AI Act. In early May, ASML joined<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fouquet is a figure to whom senior government officials and tech executives open their doors. Last month he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[1204,211,210,174,15447,4740,967,3322,15492,4243,190,49,3504,286,7310,4627,213,1866,4690,1535,239,3589,76,1888],"class_list":["post-89132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-china","tag-cloud","tag-companies","tag-construction","tag-data","tag-data-centers","tag-exclusive","tag-germany","tag-industry","tag-intelligence","tag-markets","tag-omnibus","tag-regions-cohesion","tag-rights","tag-services","tag-software","tag-supply-chains","tag-technology","tag-thierry-breton","tag-united-states","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116616073366412003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}