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European approach to artificial intelligence

The EU’s approach to artificial intelligence promotes excellence and trust, by boosting research and industrial capacity while ensuring safety and fundamental rights.

These 2 ambitions are inseparable. To unlock the full potential of AI, Europe must build an ecosystem of excellence that leverages its strengths in research, industrial know-how and regulatory capacity across the AI value chain. At the same time, developing an ecosystem of trust is essential to promote confidence in AI and provide legal certainty for businesses to innovate.

To achieve this, Europe’s AI policy approach has been evolving for nearly a decade, resulting in the development of a comprehensive governance framework for AI and a set of concrete instruments covering regulation, capability-building and adoption. Together, these elements guide EU responses to emerging and disruptive innovations.

AI Continent Action Plan

The AI Continent Action Plan is turning Europe into a global leader in AI by accelerating the development, deployment and uptake of the technology across key sectors like healthcare, education, industry, and environmental sustainability.

The plan is to build large-scale AI data and computing infrastructures, increase access to high-quality data, foster AI adoption in strategic sectors, strengthen AI skills and talent and facilitate the implementation of the AI Act. Key components include:

The Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) aims to reduce strategic dependencies and advance the AI Continent Action Plan’s goal of more sovereign, resilient and competitive European AI solutions. CADA will create better conditions for businesses, researchers, and public administrations to innovate and invest in AI and cloud technologies.

Apply AI Strategy

The Apply AI Strategy complements the AI Continent Action Plan. It aims to harness AI’s transformative potential by increasing AI adoption and integration across key industrial and public sectors, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and support their specific needs.

This strategy is boosting  EU capabilities to unlock societal benefits, from enabling more accurate medical diagnoses to increasing the accessibility and efficiency of public services. 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.

To coordinate AI-related policies and continue the dialogue on EU strategic sectors, the European Commission also launched the Apply AI Alliance. This is a forum made up of AI providers, industry, public sector, academia, social partners and civil society organisations. Closely connected to this forum, the upcoming AI Observatory will track AI trends and assess the impact of AI in specific sectors. 

AI Act

The AI Act introduces a clear, easy-to-understand approach based on 4 different levels of risk - giving AI developers, deployers, and users clarity about how to address risks generated by specific AI uses. The law strikes a balance between promoting AI research and innovation while ensuring Europeans can benefit from safe and trustworthy AI.

The Commission is committed to a clear, simple and innovation-friendly implementation of the AI Act. In November 2025, we proposed targeted amendments to the AI Act (the 'AI omnibus') as part of the digital simplification package. In May 2026, a political agreement to simplify AI rules was reached. 

These efforts complement actions already underway to provide clarity for businesses and national authorities. Find an overview of the upcoming guidelines supporting the implementation of the AI Act.

AI innovation package and GenAI4EU initiative

The 2024 Innovation Package to support AI startups and SMEs was designed to create the conditions to give smaller companies greater access to key ingredients for developing AI: data, computing, algorithms and talent. This also includes access to supercomputing.

One key element of this package is the Communication on boosting startups and innovation in trustworthy AI that sets out a strategic investment framework in trustworthy AI. This will enable the EU to capitalise on its assets, in particular its world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, and to foster an innovative European AI ecosystem.

Part of the Communication, the GenAI4EU initiative aims to stimulate the uptake of generative AI across the EU’s key strategic industrial ecosystems. In turn, that will encourage the development of large open innovation ecosystems that will boost collaboration between AI startups and deployers of AI in both industrial and public sectors.

Important milestones

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Europe is transforming into the AI continent by fostering the development and uptake of new AI applications while ensuring that AI remains safe and respect EU values.

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Last update

4 June 2026

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