DG Progress

🚀 🇪🇺 Welcome to DG Progress! 🇪🇺 🚀 The European Commission doesn’t yet have a Directorate-General dedicated to Europe’s economic, social, and consumer progress—so we’re filling in. DG Progress is here to help bridge the gap between Europe’s builders and our policymaking bubble. We will shed light on Europe's strengths, advocate for what its innovators need to make the next great leaps, and share ways to get involved. 📬 Subscribe here: dgprogress.eu

✉️May’s edition of DG Progress is live! In this edition: 🏗️ European robots are on the move ⛽ Negotiations over the AI Act come to a close 🌉 Atomico’s Tom Wehmeier on Europe’s tech ecosystem 🛣️ Brussels awaits the Tech Sovereignty Package 🪟The European Commission wins meme of the month! open.substack.com/pub/dgprogress…

🇪🇺 European champs Mistral AI, Airbus, ASML, Ericsson, Nokia, SAP, and Siemens published last week a letter the EU to get serious about backing them. What do they want? 🤝 Industry leaders and policymakers consulting as one 🚀 Unlocking innovation through coordinated execution ⏱️ Systems that can act within the window where decisions still matter The debate in Europe is shifting from regulation to execution. Now it's up to the EU to speed things up 🚀 nokia.com/newsroom/europ…

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🎉🇪🇺 EU lawmakers reached a deal on simplifying the #AIAct early this morning (~ 4.30am 😬). The goal is to make the law easier to comply with. Key changes: 🗓️ High-risk AI obligations (e.g., biometrics, critical infrastructure, education, employment, law enforcement) delayed to Dec 2027 ⚙️ Machinery products with AI only comply with sectoral safety rules (no AI Act overlap) 💡 Products with AI that assist users or optimise performance won't automatically face high-risk obligations (a win for everyday adoption!) 📊 SME exemptions extended to small mid-caps The EU is refining its AI rulebook in real time. More simplification and clarifications is only good news for innovators 📈 mlex.com/mlex/articles/…

🇪🇺 The EU is listening to innovators 🚀 The issue? ❌ The bloc created 660 sets of new laws in the past decade 💶 Eurostat say these rules cost European businesses €150bn in paperwork (~1% of the EU's GDP) 📦 The IMF say the EU's internal tariffs now amount to 44%–110% So what's the new EU government doing about it? 🚌 Proposed 10 batches of simpler rules for companies in areas from digital to defence, admin costs could be slashed by €37.5bn by 2029 📜 Creating a simple, cheaper, and faster EU incorporation for companies for a truly pan-European market 🏦 Reforming the capital markets to encourage larger, cross-border investment Von der Leyen's Commission has pivoted from regulation-first to reform-first, and is pushing the EU to become a truly federal market. Lots of work is still to be done... but progress is happening! 📈

🛣️ The road ahead for European AI business remains unclear. 🇪🇺 EU institutions failed to agree on AI Act amendments this week, exposing real limits in the Commission's simplification agenda. The omnibus proposals are meant to ease regulatory burdens while maintaining protections. Instead, we're seeing: ❌ Most simplification proposals rejected by member states and lawmakers 💡 Reforms that industry wanted to prevent sectoral overlap between the AI Act and other laws are the main cause of this breakdown ⏳ The 2 Aug compliance deadline for high-risk AI systems still hanging... Critical two weeks before negotiators return to the table. Europe needs workable AI rules that support innovation. mlex.com/mlex/articles/…

Extraordinary EU energy development: The Belgian Government has just announced it intends to buy all seven nuclear units from owner Engie. Perhaps 3, 5 or more reactors are now potentially going to be saved and restarted. Decommissioning work may be stopped immediately.

🇮🇪 Ireland's semiconductor champion, Tyndall, just launched a 5-year strategy to cement its place as one of Europe's leading deep tech institutes. The plan? 🚀 Scale annual income to €80M+ 👥 Expand workforce by 30% to 750+ employees 💡 Launch 10 new spinouts 🌱 Scale 30+ Irish SMEs through infrastructure access 🎓 Train 200+ postgraduate students Headquartered in - lowkey huge tech hub! - Cork, Tyndall is partnering with University College Cork and the Irish Government as part of the country's Silicon Island initiative ☘️ Europe's semiconductor ecosystem is GROWING. Check out the news here: tyndall.ie/news/taoiseach…

🌉 We spoke with Benedict Evans, renowned tech analyst and seasoned venture partner, about the EU’s regulatory positioning, how laws impact product designs, and the importance of even AI adoption. ❓How is Brussels’ approach to regulation, especially in the digital space, viewed from potential investors and partners across the world? 🎤 "When I talk to people in the Valley, there’s a perception that a lot of this is protectionism, which I don’t think anyone in Europe thinks it is. The other thing is it’s such a big cultural conflict and an execution conflict. Americans are used to rules-based systems where you’re told what the rules are. They would come to Europe, and they thought the answer would be, “As long as you follow the principles, it’ll be fine.” The problem is, if you’re Apple or Meta making changes to comply with new laws, you think this follows the principles, and you ask the EU for guidance and don’t get any feedback. Then they’d go home, wake up, and get an email that said, “Nope, you’re in breach, here’s a billion-dollar fine.” That gets a bunch of people in the Valley going to D.C., saying, “This is just bad faith. We tried to follow the rules.” Check out our full interview with Benedict, here 👉 dgprogress.eu/p/dg-progress-…

EU officials checking the Draghi report for recommendations on new digital regulations

Our phones today carry 2,000,000 x more memory than the computers that first led rockets to the moon. We have Europe's ASML to thank 🇪🇺👇 🇳🇱 Spun out of Philips, ASML went on to create the only machine that can print transistors onto the most advanced chips (like those in our phones). How? 🤝 Outsourcing: like other modern semiconductor successes, ASML chose to outsource key components rather than build everything from scratch 🧠 Talent retention: promoting young and encouraging risk-taking, ASML's value is not in its machine but in the experience of loyal engineers who run it 🌍 International partnerships: ASML joined international consortia and sold stakes to US and Asian companies, turning rivals into long-term partners From Isometric's Neil Hacker: worksinprogress.co/issue/the-worl…

🇫🇷 Heard of Lucy? ⚛️ Only the most powerful photonic quantum computer ever deployed in Europe. Funded through EuroHPC and France's €54B France 2030 plan, Lucy will come online in the coming weeks and be accessible to Europeans innovating in energy systems, logistics, aerospace, and more. Europe is building sovereign quantum capabilities. From lab to real-world applications 🏗️ datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lucy-f…

🇪🇺 EU member states are closing in on a deal to simply the AI Act 📈 Lawmakers aiming for: → a 18-month delay of rules for high-risk AI application → a 6-month grace period on content-marking obligations. → easier compliance for SMEs 🤝 Final negotiations set for April 28. mlex.com/mlex/articles/…

"Indispensability rather than full autonomy should guide the continent’s tech strategy," according to imec's CSO Jo De Boeck. 🇧🇪 Companies from around the world can do research in imec's open-innovation semiconductor lab in Belgium. The most important for Europe is ASML, which control's 80% of the global lithography market, and has a monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography. 🛣️ Europe's industrialists believe #ChipsAct 2.0 is a chance to double down on these advantages, rather than try to ramp up manufacturing across the board. Read 'Europe’s invisible hand in the chip race' by The Parliament for more 👉 theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/e…

🚨 April’s newsletter is LIVE 🚨 Winter is over! We have (mostly) sunny news to share. In this edition: 🏗️ Investment continues to flood into the European AI scene ⛽ The 28th Regime landed… to mixed reviews 🌉 Renowned tech analyst Benedict Evans chats with us about Europe’s tech scene 🛣️ We’re hitting the road! A few events the DG Progress team will be at in the coming months. 🪟EU-INC’s @andreasklinger wins our inaugural meme of the month! open.substack.com/pub/dgprogress…

🇮🇹 Pisa-based CamGraPhIC just secured €211 million to build AI infrastructure. By using graphene instead of silicon, CamGraPhIC's hardware increases bandwidth, lowers latency, and significantly lowers the energy consumption of AI compute. 🇪🇺 The EU's State Aid Framework provided this boost, one of the largest single public investments ever made in an Italian DeepTech startup. This is European industrial policy at work 🚀 eu-startups.com/2026/04/camgra…

What do healthy tech ecosystem vitals look like? Look no further than Euclyd. ⚡️ Its AI chip is claimed to be 100x more efficient than current GPU leaders. The Dutch startup was founded in 2024 by former ASML director Bernardo Kastrup, and its board features a former ASML CEO and the founder of Elastic (a Dutch AI company). 🔁 This is a sign of a healthy tech ecosystem: ASML (itself a product of Philips and ASM) created the talent, capital, and network that Euclyd is now recycling to generate the next wave of innovation. The Fairchildren (from Fairchild Semiconductor) and PayPal Mafia spawned the family trees of successful Silicon Valley start-ups in the 60s and early 00s. Could ASMLalum's do the same for Europe? 🚀 techfundingnews.com/euclyd-100m-ai…

Self driving cars are arriving in Europe 🚀 This year, several providers (Waymo, Uber, Lyft) will bring Level 4 automation taxi services to London. That means no driver at the wheel 🤖 Compared to human-driven journeys, autonomous vehicles are: ⚠️ far safer (> 90% fewer fatalities) 🌱 greener (electric fleets that drive more efficiently), and ♿ provide greater mobility options for people who can’t drive - or shouldn’t! European policymakers should be racing to make sure Budapest, Brussels, Berlin, etc are next up 🇪🇺

⚛️ "There is a strong feeling that while Europe missed the boat on so many tech revolutions of recent years... things could be different this time." Quantum computing is a tech race Europe can win, with companies such as 🇫🇷 Alice & Bob (which "may sound like an ice-cream company" 😂), 🇫🇷 Pasqal, 🇬🇧 Oxford Quantum Circuits , and 🇫🇮 IQM, continuing to push the frontier. Why Europe has a shot: → World-class physics talent (3 Nobel Prizes to French physicists in recent years) → No legacy tech disadvantage, a fresh start → European firms lead on cost and energy efficiency Rather than try to build the entire stack, the EU should double down on these comparative opportunities 🚀 bbc.com/news/articles/…

Last week OpenAI announced pausing its UK Stargate project, citing high energy costs and regulations that make it hard to build. This will put a dent in the UK's AI ambitions, which have otherwise attracted more than £100 billion in private investment since Starmer became the British Prime Minister. It's a stark reminder of the significance of energy and land-use planning policy for investment decisions and future economic growth. If we really want to be competitive, we have to get these basic building blocks right most of all. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…