The president of France Emmanuel Macron states that Europe “is not in the AI ​​race”

CNN
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For a man who has spent his career fighting to make France more pro -business, Europe’s perspectives in artificial intelligence are worrisome: an oversight that could cost the block expensive.

“Today we are not in the race,” said the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, to Richard Quest de CNN in an exclusive interview at the Elysee Palace on Thursday. “We are staying behind.”

“We need an AI agenda,” he said, “because we have to close the gap with the United States and China in the field of AI.” The French leader added that he fears that Europe will become a mere consumer of AI and lose control over future technology management and development.

That is part of the impulse behind the top of this week in Paris, Macron’s most recent effort to put France at the center of the debate and decision making on international issues of the day.

Macron periodically promotes the perspectives of the Mistral company, based in Paris, considered widely as the OpenAi European competitor, which launched a new application on Thursday.

The company boasts of its ability to rival its US competitors, obtaining the same results with less necessary calculation power, although the surprise arrival of its Chinese competitor with the lowest cost, Deepseek, has pressed to the French firm.

With its strongly nuclear energy portfolio, which makes France a net energy exporter, the country is in an enviable position for the creation of data centers with great energy consumption.

France prepares to reveal what its government states is the largest supercomputer in Europe for the fall of 2025, on the outskirts of Paris.

The site of Mont Valerien will be a military installation that will provide large -scale artificial intelligence capabilities to help solve design and engineering issues, such as the architecture of the next French aircraft carriers. Artificial intelligence will also be used to improve future military technologies and practices, such as drone interference, according to the French Ministry of Defense.

That is the exception. Since Europe has barely between 3 and 5% of world computer power, Macron said that this surplus of power opens the doors to the artificial intelligence of the European future. Its objective is to build 20% of the world’s data centers.

But the financing, especially from the United States and the Arab countries of the Gulf, will be key, according to Macron.

This is where Europe “must do it much better,” Macron said.

Finding cash within the continent could be an involuntary blessing if the tariff threats of the US president Donald Trump against European allies reach a critical point.

“From the United States point of view, the EU treats us very, very unfair, very badly,” Trump said in the World Economic Forum in January, and then threatened to impose tariffs against the block after applying, and then repeal, significant taxes on imports from Canada and Mexico.

The 10% generalized tariffs that Trump imposed on China is still in force, and the president said he will announce new tariffs called reciprocals that could affect all corners of the world.

Trump has criticized the United States commercial deficit with the European Union, which increased from US $ 26.9 billion to US $ 235.6 billion in 2024, according to US government figures.

Macron opposed this, arguing that the commercial deficit ignores the important expense of Europe in digital services, which is often excluded from such calculations.

In response to possible tariffs, Macron said that Europe should seek to protect producers against US and China competition and, fundamentally, make investments regulation more flexible to curb the “escape” of European savings to the United States. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, reflected that position resolved last week.

Competitiveness is key, Macron told CNN.

“I will fight for artificial intelligence,” he said, and asked for a business environment that makes Europe more competitive. “I will fight for more responses in defense and security as Europeans. And I will fight for the highest level of ambition in all these issues. ”

February and March will bring ads and a reform roadmap around the regulations of emerging artificial intelligence companies, Macron said, in an effort to rival the artificial intelligence agenda of the United States and China.

“We have to focus on ending some absurd regulations and simplifying the current environment,” Macron said. “Europe has to simplify its rules, make them much more favorable for companies and synchronize with the United States.”

He hopes that, at least in regards to AI, this week’s summit is a “attention call” for Europe.