EU Needs Better Tech Strategy to Avoid Falling Further Behind US, China, Experts Say

The European Union is increasingly losing out in technology competition with the U.S. and China, technology and trade experts said during a Nov. 6 event hosted by Chatham House. While they suggested more EU cooperation with the U.S., they also said Europe needs a different approach to technology regulation to keep from falling further behind.

“Where are we number one? In semiconductors? Clearly no. In autonomous driving? No,” said Andre Loesekrug-Pietri, director of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative. “We're not just bystanders,” Loesekrug-Pietri added. “We are increasingly inexistent.”

The U.S. has over the last several years placed more of an emphasis on maintaining its global lead in a range of technology sectors, particularly over concerns of technology theft by China. That has included a host of new export controls, trade restrictions and a national strategy on emerging and critical technologies (see 2010150038 and 2007220050).

But Europe has struggled to do the same partly because of differences within the EU, whose members impose separate technology regulations, the experts said. “A big, single market is I think one of the most important things if we want to keep up with China and the U.S.,” said Ammar Alkassar, the commissioner for strategy at the Saarland state government in Germany.

Loesekrug-Pietri called for technology regulations that are “much more agile” and that can “adapt at the same pace as the pace of technology.” He said the U.S. and China both had strategies for artificial intelligence “two or three years” before the EU did. “When you look at the AI strategy at the European level, you have 27 different strategies, which will end up in 27 different sets of local regulations,” he said. “And there will be no surprise that there won’t be an AI champion.”

Although member states should follow EU regulations, those regulations do not allow for much innovation or benefit European competitiveness, said Anu Bradford, a trade expert and professor at Columbia Law School. “We talk about the technology war between the United States and China, and the EU is often seen as a referee in that game,” Bradford said. The EU “needs to get on the field and play both offense and defense to make sure that the EU is not a bystander when it comes to developing technological capacities.”

Although the U.S. Congress is very divided -- especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate after the U.S. elections -- Bradford said the EU may be able to work more closely with the U.S. on China. “There is not a Democrat or a Republican who would not worry about Chinese attempts to [import] surveillance technologies,” she said. “So there I am more optimistic, even though I do not underestimate the difficulties in generally predicting how much we can do with the United States going forward. But there’s certainly an opening there.”