Merz urges Germany and Europe to build their own AI at Berlin Digital Summit, naming France and Canada as partners

Chancellor Friedrich Merz used the German government's Digital Summit in Berlin on 2 November to argue that Germany and Europe must develop their own AI capabilities faster and lean less on outside providers. The two-day event, held under the theme of safe, sovereign and competitive AI, ran until 3 November.

What Merz said

In the speech published by the federal government, Merz defined digital sovereignty as the ability to take self-determined decisions on developing and using digital technologies, in line with European values and security interests, and to enforce them. He said Germany should be able to build and steer technology across the chain, from hardware to software. As AI becomes core infrastructure for business, the state and society, he argued, relying on a handful of providers turns into an existential question.

He was explicit that this does not mean autarky. Merz stressed working with like-minded allies and diversifying supply chains, pointing to France, with which Germany drafted a joint definition of digital sovereignty now fed into EU legislative work, and to Canada, whose minister Solomon attended the summit. He also mentioned a European frontier AI initiative that Italy, Finland and Poland have joined. Reuters summarised the message as a call to build AI capabilities faster to protect digital sovereignty.

Targets, not new money

The concrete elements were mostly existing goals. Merz said AI compute capacity should at least quadruple by 2030 under the national data centre strategy, that public supercomputers are being opened to startups and industry, and that government efforts helped trigger €12 billion in private investment commitments in key technologies. A first report by a national AI task force, titled "Deutschland als KI-Nation 2030", was presented alongside the summit. He named no new public funding programme, no AI gigafactory and no timetable for the Franco-German work, a point also noted by Politique Matin.

Context and criticism

ZDFheute reported that about 1,000 participants were expected, including the heads of Mistral and Cohere, and that the agenda covered making EU AI rules simpler after parts of the AI Act were postponed this year. Germany is also building a national AI Safety Institute. Markus Beckedahl of the Zentrum für Digitalrechte und Demokratie told the broadcaster he expected no breakthroughs and that dependence on US firms has grown since last year's summit, where France and Germany set out their sovereignty goals.