- Europe must build its own AI capabilities to avoid reliance on a switch controlled elsewhere.
- Advanced AI development is concentrated in the United States and China, creating control and access risks for European firms.
- US export controls on Anthropic and vetting of OpenAI access show dependency is now a practical vulnerability for Europe.
- Cutting off AI access would be unprecedented leverage over Europe, underscoring urgency for a European AI strategy and investment.
Europe must develop its own artificial intelligence capabilities so that it does not depend on a “switch controlled elsewhere”, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde warned on Thursday.
The development of the most advanced AI models is now “concentrated in the United States and China,” Lagarde said at the tenth annual conference of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).
That raised “the question of who controls access to the models that European financial institutions may come to rely on,” she added.
The increasing power and applicability of AI models developed by the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI in the United States and DeepSeek in China have led to comparisons with critical all-purpose technologies as important as electricity or plumbing.
Europe was reminded of its relative dependence in June after the US government imposed an export control on two of Anthropic’s most powerful models and vetted client access to another model from OpenAI.
“Who controls access to the models its financial institutions may come to rely on? That question was once hypothetical,” Lagarde said.
“Since this summer, it no longer is.”
Lagarde has repeatedly stressed the need for Europe to develop homegrown AI.
The ability to cut off the continent from a technology as wide-reaching as AI would represent “the kind of leverage no trade partner has ever held over Europe”, she warned in a September speech.
