Without urgent and far-reaching action beginning this year, the prosperity, sovereignty, and security of all Europeans are at risk as AI advances at a rapid pace.

The next months and years of AI progress have the potential for both great opportunity and grave danger. Europe, on its current trajectory, is fully exposed to the latter but only to a small share of the former. Like the rest of the world, Europe faces threats such as AI-enabled cyber or biological attacks or loss of control over AI systems. But even if the world manages to mitigate these threats and AI delivers predominantly positive outcomes, the wealth and strategic leverage that powerful AI generates will, by default, concentrate outside of Europe. 

Neither of these outcomes needs to be Europe’s destiny. But the window for action is closing further every month. Unless Europe wakes up, it risks having no meaningful control over how the most consequential technology ever built will affect its citizens.

This strategy sets out a plan for how Europe can change course. Part A describes strategic priorities and lists recommendations for how to achieve them. Part B contains implementation details for those recommendations.