The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, has launched two new strategies in its ongoing effort to help Europe stay competitive in the race to “harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence.”
The ‘Apply AI Strategy’ sets out how to speed up the use of AI in Europe’s key industries and the public sector, while the ‘AI in Science Strategy’ focuses on putting Europe at the forefront of AI-driven research.
“I want the future of AI to be made in Europe. Because when AI is used, we can find smarter, faster, and more affordable solutions,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “AI adoption needs to be widespread, and with these strategies, we will help speed up the process.”
She added that “putting AI first also means putting safety first. We will drive this ‘AI first’ mindset across all our key sectors, from robotics to healthcare, energy, and automotive.”
The announcement of the two AI boosting strategies is part of an ongoing effort by the EU to stay competitive in a space overwhelmingly dominated by the United States.
It follows the EU’s February launch of the ‘InvestAI’ initiative, to mobilize €200 billion ($232 billion) of investment in AI in order to boost the development of the most complex AI models and “make Europe an AI continent.”
Von der Leyen justified this substantial investment at the time by saying that “AI will improve our healthcare, spur our research and innovation and boost our competitiveness.”
A couple of months later, in April, the Commission launched the AI Continent Action Plan, which set the goal of making Europe a global leader in AI. According to last week’s announcement, the Apply AI and the AI in Science strategies represent “the next step in delivering this ambition.”
Apply AI Strategy
According to the Commission, the Apply AI Strategy aims to drive AI adoption across strategic and public sectors, including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri-food, defense, communications, and culture.
It will also support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with their specific needs and help industries integrate AI into their operations.
Among the strategy’s specific measures are establishing AI-powered advanced screening centers for healthcare, and supporting the development of frontier models and agentic AI tailored to sectors such as manufacturing, environment, and pharmaceuticals.
“The Apply AI Strategy is designed to enhance the competitiveness of strategic sectors and strengthen the EU’s technological sovereignty,” said the Commission. “It aims to boost AI adoption and innovation across Europe, particularly among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).”
Without naming the U.S., this appears to strongly allude to growing concerns among the EU hierarchy that the bloc is falling too far behind the global tech powerhouse in innovation.
In November 2024, Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI published its ‘Global AI Power Rankings’ which ranked countries across various pillars of AI significance, including research and development, level of AI-related economic activity, and infrastructure. It showed that the U.S. remains the global leader in AI, followed by China and the United Kingdom.
“The U.S. has the world’s most robust AI ecosystem and outperforms every other country by significant margins,” found the Institute. “The U.S. leads in virtually every pillar. In 2023, it produced the highest quality AI research, built the most notable machine learning models, spent the most in private investment, and had the most AI merger/acquisition activity.”
Based on the report, the U.S. also boasted the highest number of AI job postings and newly funded AI startups.
More recently, this research was backed up by Forbes’ April 2025 list of the top 50 AI companies, produced in partnership with Sequoia and Meritech Capital, which spotlighted the most promising privately-held AI companies in the world. A whopping 42 of the top 50 were U.S.-based companies, including Anthropic (developer of the Claude models) and OpenAI (maker of the GPT models).
This puts into focus the substantial challenge that competitor jurisdictions such as the EU face, and why the European Commission has felt the need to come up with a way to support its lagging AI sector.
Apply AI Strategy, it hopes, will help redress the imbalance. It includes an investment of around €1 billion ($1.14 billion) to help fund new initiatives in areas such as finance, tourism, and e-commerce, which could complement these sectors.
“The strategy will help boost EU capabilities to unlock societal benefits, from enabling more accurate healthcare diagnoses to enhancing the efficiency and accessibility of public services,” said Commission. “It encourages an AI-first policy, so more companies consider AI as a part of the solution to tackle challenges, while taking into careful consideration the benefits and the risks of the technology.”
It added that the strategy will also involve strengthening the EU workforce to be AI-ready across sectors, as well as launching a ‘Frontier AI initiative’ to support innovation by bringing together Europe’s leading AI actors.
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AI in Science Strategy
Alongside Apply AI, the Commission launched the ‘AI in Science Strategy,’ which it hopes will position the EU as a hub for AI-driven scientific innovation.
A key part of this will be the ‘Resource for AI Science in Europe’ (RAISE), a virtual European institute that pools and coordinates resources for developing and applying AI in science.
Specific strategic goals include investing €58 million ($66.12 million) in a pilot to train, retain and attract the best AI and scientific talent; increasing investing €600 million ($684 million) to enhance and expand access to computational power for science; and doubling the EU’s annual investments in AI research funding to over €3 billion ($3.42 billion).
The Commission said that the added investments would “secure dedicated access to AI Gigafactories for EU researchers and startups”, as well as provide support for scientists “to identify strategic data gaps and gather, curate and integrate the datasets needed for AI in science.”
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Next steps
Looking forward, the Commission said it would present a ‘Data Union Strategy’ at the end of October to better align data policies with the needs of businesses, the public sector, and society.
It also highlighted the upcoming ‘AI in Science Summit’ taking place in Copenhagen in November that will bring together policymakers, researchers, and industry. On the agenda will be a number of measures and goals outlined in the new AI in Science Strategy.
The announcement of the two new AI strategies comes hot on the heels of news that Eurozone finance ministers were planning on meeting this week to discuss increased support for euro-based stablecoins, to challenge U.S. dominance in this space also.
Together, the new AI strategies and the plan to boost euro stablecoins demonstrate a concern amongst EU leaders that Europe is falling behind the U.S. in support for innovative frontier technologies such as AI, blockchain, and Web3. An issue the bloc is clearly keen to address.
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Source: https://coingeek.com/eu-unveils-dual-strategies-to-drive-ai-growth-across-europe/
