Clifford Chance
EU AI Continent Action Plan - April 2025
16 April 2025
On 9 April, the European Commission published its AI Continent Action Plan focused on making the EU a global leader in AI. It includes strategic initiatives, policies and actions to, for instance:
1. Increase the EU's AI-critical computing power and infrastructure, notably needed for AI training, fine-tuning, testing and deployment. Plans include establishing resource-efficient AI Gigafactories and increasing the EU’s current cloud and data centre capacity, amongst other things.
2. Ensure access to necessary data for AI.
3. Boost AI innovation and adoption, including in key European industrial sectors (advanced manufacturing, aerospace, security & defence, energy & fusion research, environment, mobility & automotive, pharma, biotech, electronic comms, etc.) and with the public sector also acting as a 'leading strategic driver' of the strategy.
The Action Plan also looks at regulation – its final pillar is all about regulatory simplification, including as regards the recent EU AI Act itself. And this all ties into key questions around global competitiveness, digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy – all of which have taken on a new meaning in today's geopolitical and trade environment.
The Action Plan also identifies opportunities where stakeholders can get involved, e.g. there are consultations, calls for expressions of interest, calls for proposals – and several have already been launched.
In this short overview, we highlight some key features and drivers of the AI Continent Action Plan, including some of the opportunities to get involved.
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