Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, has warned that Europe must urgently develop its own artificial intelligence models and build more datacentres to avoid becoming dangerously dependent on the US or China. Speaking in Vienna, she argued that if this dependence is left unchecked, trade partners could gain unprecedented leverage over Europe, potentially threatening to cut off or alter access to AI systems that will soon underpin essential services such as border checks, tax audits, rail networks, hospital care and banking payments.

Lagarde cited stark figures: the US produced 59 notable AI models last year and China 35, compared with just one each from France and the UK, while the US hosts 75% of global AI computing capacity against Europe's mere 5%. She said Europe faces "an awkward choice" between holding back on AI adoption to protect its data and economic autonomy, or adopting it rapidly and risking dependency, and pointed to strained trust with the Trump administration—over tariffs, Greenland and US troop withdrawals—as reason for urgency. She noted AI could boost productivity by up to 4% over a decade if adopted quickly, but warned that Europe's datacentre capacity gap is projected to grow more than sixfold within ten years, while European pension funds' heavy exposure to US tech stocks leaves savings vulnerable to any market correction.