Europe’s Top Tech CEOs Warn Brussels: Cut the AI Red Tape Now

May 6, 2026 - 15:00

EBM Newsdesk Analysis

BRUSSELS, May 6 — The chief executives of seven of Europe’s largest technology companies — ASML, Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral AI, Nokia, SAP and Siemens — have published a joint opinion piece in Handelsblatt, Corriere della Sera and other major European newspapers demanding that Brussels simplify the EU AI Act. The intervention lands days before the European Commission resumes formal talks on streamlining the 2024 legislation, and three weeks before Ursula von der Leyen presents the Tech Sovereignty Package on May 27, which includes proposals on chip industry support and AI infrastructure funding still under negotiation.

The CEOs’ core argument is direct. More than three years after the ChatGPT moment, Europe is still debating regulation while the United States and China have moved on to scaling AI in physical systems and robotics. The signatories are not lobbyists or trade associations. They run companies that between them generate hundreds of billions of euros in annual revenue and employ more than half a million people across the continent. When this group writes a joint op-ed in seven languages, Brussels has to listen.

A joint warning from the bosses of the seven companies that anchor European industrial technology is the clearest signal yet that the EU AI Act, as currently designed, is failing the businesses it was meant to enable.

What the Seven CEOs Are Actually Asking For

The op-ed has three demands and one diagnosis. The diagnosis is that Europe has spent three years writing rules while its rivals have spent three years building products. The demands are simpler regulation, stronger industrial policy, and merger rules that allow European companies to grow into genuine global competitors.

On simpler regulation, the target is the EU AI Act passed in March 2024, which classifies AI systems into four risk tiers and imposes detailed compliance requirements on anything labelled “high-risk.” Penalties run to 6 per cent of global annual turnover. The CEOs are not asking for the Act to be scrapped. They are asking for the documentation, audit and reporting burden to be cut so that companies can deploy AI in production without spending six to twelve months on compliance work for every new system.

On industrial policy, the ask is more direct. The signatories want the kind of state-backed support the United States gave through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, and that China has provided through its industrial subsidy regime for over a decade. Without it, European AI companies are competing against rivals whose capital costs are subsidised and whose home markets are protected.

On merger rules, the message is sharpest. European competition law has historically blocked European companies from consolidating to the scale needed to compete globally. Mistral AI, with all its talent and IP, remains a fraction of the size of OpenAI. Siemens cannot acquire competitors at home without triggering Brussels intervention. The CEOs are asking for the rules to be rewritten so European firms can build the scale their American rivals already have.

Why This Matters Now

The timing is not coincidence. Brussels is two weeks away from publishing the Tech Sovereignty Package. The AI Act simplification talks resume this month. The op-ed is designed to land in the window when policy positions are still movable.

The signatories are also responding to a broader problem visible in the data. European venture capital has outperformed North America for a decade on a returns basis, but the European tech ecosystem still has no companies of the scale of Nvidia, Microsoft, Google or Meta. Mistral is the closest thing Europe has to a frontier AI lab, and even Mistral is one-twentieth the size of OpenAI. Without industrial policy and merger reform, the gap widens further with every quarter.

This is also where the EU AI Act becomes the symbol of a deeper problem. The Act was designed to protect European citizens and to set a global standard for responsible AI. It has done both. What it has also done — unintentionally — is add cost, time and legal risk to every European company trying to build AI products, while imposing little practical constraint on the US and Chinese giants whose systems Europeans use anyway.

The Wider Tech Sovereignty Battle

The op-ed also reads as a defensive move against Brussels’ expanding tech regulation more broadly. Over sixty antitrust cases are now active against US tech platforms in Europe. The Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, the Data Act and the AI Act now form a regulatory perimeter that European companies must navigate alongside their American competitors — but Europeans face it without the scale, capital or home-market dominance to absorb the cost.

The CEOs’ frustration is that Europe has built a regulatory framework appropriate for a continent of large, mature tech companies it does not yet have. The framework constrains the few European companies trying to build that scale, while doing little to slow the foreign giants whose dominance the framework was partly designed to address.

What This Means for European Business

For European corporates, the op-ed signals that the political conversation around AI regulation is shifting fast. If Brussels listens, expect a streamlined AI Act with reduced documentation requirements, a clearer “innovation sandbox” carve-out for startups and scale-ups, and faster M&A approval pathways for European-on-European deals. If Brussels does not listen, expect the seven signatories to escalate publicly through the second half of 2026 — with Mistral and SAP particularly well-placed to keep this conversation in the headlines.

The deeper signal for European boards is that the post-March 2026 cycle has shifted. Europe’s industrial leaders are no longer politely asking for support. They are publishing joint op-eds in seven newspapers demanding it. That is not a tone Brussels has heard from this constituency before.

The next test arrives on May 27, when the Tech Sovereignty Package lands. If it includes meaningful AI Act simplification, this op-ed will be remembered as the intervention that moved policy. If it does not, expect Mistral, Siemens and SAP to escalate — and expect Washington and Beijing to keep building.

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