EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls AI “the second tipping point of our times”, alongside climate change, and says its risks must be “addressed”
Commission issues €11 billion in its 8th syndicated transaction of 2026
Financial Times
Context & Ripple Effects
The Commission has pursued AI scale and adoption alongside governance: it outlined a €200 billion investment mobilisation plan in 2025 and opened bidding for AI Gigafactories in July 2026, with an expected €30 billion of investment. Its earlier regulatory posture also included a warning from commissioner Věra Jourová against being overly restrictive on generative AI.
Von der Leyen’s language puts risk management at the political center of that combined agenda. It matters because the Commission is presenting AI not only as infrastructure and industrial capacity, but as a societal issue requiring intervention.
First-order effects
The EU Commission’s AI deployment, research and infrastructure agenda is explicitly tied to addressing risk, giving its policy program a mandate broader than competitiveness or technology adoption alone.
Second-order effects
AI Gigafactory bidders and companies targeted by the Commission’s adoption strategies face an EU agenda in which capacity-building is paired with a stated expectation of risk governance.
Third-order effects
If that balance holds, EU AI industrial policy will consolidate around a dual mandate: build domestic AI capacity while using governance to manage its social and systemic consequences.
The trend: European AI policy is converging on an industrial-policy model that treats compute, adoption and risk controls as interdependent parts of technological sovereignty.
@FT Similar bans achieved very little in Australia. In fact, they've just made everyday usage go underground. Educating kids and parents on how to use social media beats bans. But I suspect this is more about politics and economics vs safeguarding.
Every parent has the power to control access to SoMe for their children. STOP LYING TO PEOPLE. This is about you wanting control. About you taking us from a free society with negative freedom, to a velvet totalitarian Nanny state with positive “freedom
The EU is set to ban the use of social media, certain gaming platforms and AI chatbots by children under 15 without parental supervision, as part of a wider push to protect them online. Read the full story here: https://www.ft.com/...
This would be terrible for the next generation of humanity. The apps and games of today are the paintbrushes and tree forts of yesterday. Fortnite has Creative Mode, Roblox has Roblox studio, and being a digital creator is in everyone's reach, till politicians take it away.
This sort of social media regulation by Brussels is a classic example of something that should be left up to individual member-states and not the EU. The mission-creep is non-stop. https://www.rte.ie/...
The government is not your co-parent. If you're too scared to tell your kids no, that's your problem. Stop asking Brussels to do it for you. (And that's before we get into the fact that it creates a burden to collect IDs from everyone, destroying anonymity.)
It's taken an awful long time for the @EU_Commission to make up it's mind but I welcome the plans set out by @vonderleyen to introduce a ban on all under 13s on social media - the policing of the measure must be the next focus #SOTU
We, however, recommend an alternative to the proposal to give parental control over accounts of 13 to 14-year-olds. While important, it overlooks the reality that parental control, especially where it includes content supervision, may not always be in children's best interests.
.@amnesty welcomes the focus on safety-by-design. The approach recognizes that addictive & harmful product design must be strictly regulated, with bans on infinite scrolling & autoplay & strict limitations on how algorithmic feeds are shaped.
EU's von der Leyen: Tomorrow, the Commission is proposing the Kids Act. We will take a gradual and differentiated approach. No social media under the age of 13, no personal account under the age of 15. From 13 to under 15, only accounts set up and supervised by parents or guar…
“It is not about our minors accessing social media. It is about when and how do we allow social media to access minors.” Below President @vonderleyen at #SOTEU ↓
We do not have to accept big tech's harmful features for our children. Tomorrow, we are proposing the KIDS ACT. For each age, a tailored protection level on online platforms. And we will present a Digital Fairness Act - addressing online harms for all, not only minors. #SOTEU
In her State of the Union address, President von der Leyen stressed the exceptional geopolitical challenges and incredible speed of change that Europe is facing. …
Ursula von der Leyen just gave her 2026 State of the Union Address where she announced that tomorrow, the Commission will be proposing the EU KIDS ACT …