The EU’s approach to artificial intelligence promotes excellence and trust, by boosting research and industrial capacity while ensuring safety and fundamental rights.
The first European AI Strategy aimed at making the EU a world-class hub for AI and ensuring that AI is human-centric and trustworthy. Such an objective translates into the European approach to excellence and trust through concrete rules and actions. Many other initiatives followed, with the aim to boost the development and uptake of AI in Europe, strengthening competitiveness and technological sovereignty.
AI Continent Action Plan and Apply AI Strategy
Strengthening previous initiatives, the April 2025 AI Continent Action Plan aims to make Europe a global leader in AI. The Action Plan focuses on developing trustworthy AI technologies to enhance Europe’s competitiveness while safeguarding and advancing our democratic values. It aims to bring the benefits of AI to various sectors such as healthcare, education, industry, and environmental sustainability.
The plan includes actions 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 establishment of AI Factories and Gigafactories, the InvestAI Facility to stimulate private investment
- AI Act Service Desk, to support a smooth and effective implementation of the AI Act across the EU
- the future launch of the AI Skills Academy
Launched in October 2025, 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.
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. 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’ needs, the Commission also launched the Apply AI Alliance. This is coordination forum with AI providers, industry, public sector, academia, social partners and civil society organisations. Closely connected to the Alliance, an AI Observatory will track AI trends and assess impact of AI in specific sectors.
AI innovation package and GenAI4EU initiative
Previously, in January 2024, the Commission launched the AI innovation package to support Artificial Intelligence startups and SMEs. The package includes several measures to support European startups and SMEs in the development of trustworthy AI that respects EU values and rules.
One key element of this package is the Communication on boosting startups and innovation in trustworthy artificial intelligence that sets out a strategic investment framework in trustworthy AI. These will enable the EU to capitalize on its assets, in particular its world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, and to foster an innovative European AI ecosystem.
The initiative GenAI4EU is the main highlight of the Communication. It aims to stimulate the uptake of generative AI across key strategic EU industrial ecosystems. In turn that will encourage the development of large open innovation ecosystems that will foster collaboration between AI startups and deployers of AI in both industrial and public sectors.
A European approach to excellence in AI
Fostering excellence in AI will strengthen Europe’s potential to compete globally.
The EU will achieve this by:
- enabling the development and uptake of AI in the EU
- becoming the place where AI thrives from the lab to the market
- ensuring that AI works for people and is a force for good in society
- building strategic leadership in high-impact sectors
The Commission and Member States agreed to boost excellence in AI by joining forces on policy and investments. At EU level, both the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes will invest €1 billion per year in AI. The Commission will also mobilize additional investments from the private sector and the Member States to reach an annual investment volume of €20 billion over the course of the digital decade.
The Recovery and Resilience Facility makes €134 billion available for digital. This will be a game-changer, allowing Europe to amplify its ambitions and become a global leader in developing cutting-edge, trustworthy AI.
Access to high-quality data is an essential factor in building high-performance, robust AI systems. Initiatives such as the EU Cybersecurity Strategy, the Data Union Strategy provide the right infrastructure for building such systems.
The AI Act
The AI Act introduces a clear, easy-to-understand approach, based on four different levels of risk, giving AI developers, deployers, and users clarity about how to address risks generated by specific AI uses. The act strikes the 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, as outlined in the AI Continent Action Plan and the Apply AI Strategy. On 19 November 2025, the European Commission proposed targeted amendments to the AI Act as part of the Digital Simplification Package. These efforts complement the actions already underway by the Commission and its AI Office to provide clarity for businesses and national authorities — for example through guidelines, codes of practice and the AI Act Service Desk.
Important milestones
Find an overview of the upcoming guidelines supporting the implementation of the AI Act.
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19 November 2025
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