Europe missed the first digital revolution and cannot afford to miss out again with AI, as it has the full potential to compete, Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said on Wednesday.
To win the AI race against giants such as the US and China, Lagarde told the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva, the EU needs to complete its single market and integrate capital markets that remain too fragmented.
"Europe largely missed out on the first digital revolution, as the commercial gains from the spread of information and communication technologies were captured disproportionately elsewhere. We cannot afford to repeat that experience with artificial intelligence (AI), the second digital revolution," she said in Geneva.
Lagarde's analysis largely echoes that of her predecessor, Mario Draghi, who in 2024 delivered a seminal report on relaunching the EU's economic competitiveness, which pointed to AI as the last chance for Europe to rejoin the international tech race.
Following Draghi's advice, the European Commission has put forward several initiatives to promote the uptake of AI in strategic sectors as well as the financing of massive data centres in an effort to develop new generations of the technology.
