Emmanuel Macron warns the EU's AI Act risks hampering tech companies compared to US, UK, and China rivals, and says France is “neck and neck with the British”

French president argues landmark rules may leave European tech companies lagging rivals in US, UK and China

Financial Times 2023-12-12

Context & Ripple Effects

Macron’s warning extends a long-running French push to turn the country into a tech contender: an earlier assessment found the “startup nation” agenda still trailing the UK in investment, despite France’s stated ambitions France’s earlier startup-nation push.

The intervention frames AI governance as a competitiveness question as well as a safety one. That tension later reappears in calls for European technological independence, including Mistral’s push to reduce reliance on US tech giants.

First-order effects

Macron puts pressure on EU policymakers to weigh compliance burdens on European AI companies against the bloc’s regulatory goals.
French technology ambitions are explicitly benchmarked against the UK, while US and Chinese competitors become the reference point for the cost of slower innovation.

Second-order effects

European AI firms and investors gain a prominent political argument for clearer, more proportionate implementation of the AI Act, rather than rules that are harder to absorb than those faced by foreign rivals.
The warning sharpens the policy trade-off between market safeguards and the ability to build domestic AI champions, a debate that can affect where companies develop and deploy AI products.

Third-order effects

If competitiveness concerns persist, European AI policy is likely to evolve toward a combined regulatory-and-industrial strategy rather than treating rules as separate from technology capacity.
The episode is an early marker of AI sovereignty becoming a durable European policy frame: autonomy depends not only on restricting risks, but also on whether local firms can compete with external platforms.

The trend: AI regulation is increasingly being judged by whether it can protect users while preserving the domestic capacity to build strategically important AI systems.

Discussion

@sandertordoir Sander Tordoir on x
Can't judge the specifics of the act - @Zach_CER knows more. But Macron is wrong: the EU regulates a lot that we do not produce or invent. That's precisely what the Brussels effect is about.
@theresaafallon Theresa Fallon on x
Macron “attacked the new Artificial Intelligence Act agreed last Friday, saying: “We can decide to regulate much faster and much stronger than our major competitors. But we will regulate things that we will no longer produce or invent. This is never a good idea.” #AIAct [image]
@zach_cer Zach Meyers on x
The FT piece ignores this bit of the speech: “We have had European regulations to consolidate, it's a good thing, a French model of regulation”. He did not say the AI Act *would* kill EU innovation but that we should “evaluate this regulation regularly” to ensure it doesn't.
@marietjeschaake Marietje Schaake on x
A space to watch: EU's new AI Act risks hampering innovation, warns Emmanuel Macron, while Commissioner Breton negotiated the compromise agreement ↘️ https://giftarticle.ft.com/...
@thorstenbenner Thorsten Benner on x
Macron: “We can decide to regulate much faster and much stronger than our major competitors. But we will regulate things that we will no longer produce or invent. This is never a good idea”. https://www.ft.com/...
@anandmenon1 Anand Menon on x
‘We are neck and neck with the British. They will not have this regulation on foundational models’. Macron on Brexit benefits. EU's new AI Act risks hampering innovation, warns Emmanuel Macron https://www.ft.com/...
@ethicsinai @ethicsinai on x
“When I look at France, it is probably the first country in terms of artificial intelligence in continental Europe. We are neck and neck with the British. They will not have this regulation on foundational models”. https://www.ft.com/...

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