It is worth taking a look at the EU accession candidate Serbia. President Aleksandar Vučić sacrificed his head of government yesterday, Tuesday, under pressure from the streets. The starting point for the ongoing protests is the collapse of the station canopy in Serbia’s second-largest city, Novi Sad, in November. Fifteen passers-by were killed and dozens were injured.
The station had been renovated as part of a modernization of the railroad infrastructure between Belgrade and Budapest under Chinese auspices. The authorities reacted first with a cover-up and then with repression to the accusations that the renovation had been botched.
This has really fueled the student protests, which have since been joined by professors, lawyers and farmers. The younger generation is rising up against the hopelessness in a country where you only have prospects as part of Aleksandar Vučić’s power structure. The catastrophe in Novi Sad stands for rampant corruption, nepotism, and abuse of power.
Head of government Miloš Vučević is nothing more than a pawn, the protests continued yesterday evening. For the first time in his twelve years in power, Aleksandar Vučić’s position is in danger.
Brussels, Berlin and Paris should be embarrassed that, unlike in Georgia or Moldova, there are no European flags to be seen at the rallies in Serbia. The students are not on good terms with the EU, as Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron and others have so far backed Aleksandar Vučić in the interests of stability and good business. But Brussels’ favorite autocrat may only be a sham giant and will soon be history.
The statements made by Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek have shaken some fundamental assumptions about the successful development of artificial intelligence. These were that you need a lot of money, gigantic computing power, and super talents to stay ahead in the global race for artificial intelligence. If you believe DeepSeek’s message, then you have to assume that talent and entrepreneurial spirit can more than make up for the lack of other resources.
What could be Europe’s answer to the new development? The race for AI is far from over, says Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier. With solid infrastructure and talent, Europe could achieve a lot. “Europe has everything it needs to be a leader in trustworthy AI: top talent, world-class supercomputers and innovative start-ups,” said Regnier. Seven AI factories are currently being set up across Europe. “We are driving innovation while ensuring the security of AI – this is our key competitive advantage.”
Digital Minister Volker Wissing says: “Europe’s only answer to this AI challenge is trustworthiness.” An AI that is trustworthy could be a hallmark of Germany and Europe, said Wissing in Berlin on Tuesday. However, “regulation alone is not enough”, the minister added. “We have to regulate wisely.” Europe must not fall into a regulatory frenzy. “We must therefore urgently ensure that innovations are not only developed here but that their implementation also works well.”
And, of course, Europe needs more risk capital. “We need to address the issue of taxing losses resulting from risk investments,” Wissing demanded. “We need the digital single market and we also need the capital markets union in order to mobilize our financial potential in Europe to a greater extent.”
The issue of financing also plays a role in attracting the necessary talent. “Stargate’s announcement that it wants to invest USD 500 billion in AI infrastructure in the USA is attracting AI experts. That’s the problem in Europe,” says Silviu Homoceanu, founder and CTO of the AI start-up Deltia, which optimizes industrial processes. It is currently very easy for AI workers to go to the USA because they can easily find a job there. “We suffer from that here in Europe. The most important thing is to retain people and motivate them to build something here.”
It is not so important that Europe is currently lagging behind in terms of development. “Europe can build on existing developments,” says Homoceanu. This is all the more true as some companies – such as DeepSeek – are developing their models open source. Deltia itself does not use Large Language Models (LLMs), but rather its own development and adapts the AI to the needs of industrial clients. “For security reasons alone, our customers would not put their data in a cloud,” says the AI founder. One of Europe’s answers to the global AI challenges is therefore to contribute its industrial expertise to development.
The development of Large Language Models has now reached its peak (Peak AI), believes Bruno Kramm, spokesperson for Central Germany in the AI association. Progress has only been marginal, which indicates that new technological approaches are needed. “European initiatives such as XLSTM offer promising prospects here, especially through innovative model architectures that go beyond the previous limits of classic LLMs.”
To explain: XLSTM is an improved AI model that can recognize patterns in long and complex data and better understand how things are related over time. “To remain competitive, Europe must strengthen cooperation within the EU, improve funding structures, and rethink regulatory hurdles,” says Kramm.
If – as DeepSeek claims – there is a technology that makes machine learning AI more efficient, then this means “that the EU and its member states must not only invest money and time in increasing computer resources but must also continue to focus on research,” says Sebastian Raible. He manages relations with the EU for the open-source business association APELL. Efficiency also depends heavily on the quality of the data used. “And Europe is well positioned in both areas – research and data quality.”
DeepSeek has very clear and well-known disadvantages. These include, for example, the obvious censorship of unwanted content. There are also concerns about data protection and the protection of trade secrets. “European counter-offers are therefore needed quickly,” says Raible. The best way to achieve this is through cooperation: Open source as a development model allows companies to work together and still continue to compete in the market. “In this way, the resources distributed across the EU in the form of small and medium-sized companies can be effectively combined and used to our advantage.”
For the digital association Bitkom, DeepSeek shows that the AI market is much more dynamic than expected. “Neither the winners nor the losers have been decided yet,” says Susanne Dehmel, a member of the Bitkom Executive Board. “This is good news for the discussion about digital sovereignty in Germany and Europe.”
However, Europe should neither be in a state of shock because of Stargate nor euphoria because of DeepSeek. “Without our own efforts, we will not make any progress with AI.” In addition to money and more support, this also includes “not always perceiving artificial intelligence first and foremost as a threat, but as an opportunity and making the regulatory framework truly innovation-friendly”.
The internal market is the EU’s core business. However, in recent years, the dismantling of internal market barriers has become less of a priority. The Commission uses infringement proceedings less frequently than it used to, and internal market hurdles are increasing. More and more business associations are complaining about the Commission’s passivity. However, there are signs that it has recognized the problem.
“The internal market hurdles are the same as they were 20 years ago,” says Frederico Martins, Senior Policy Advisor at Eurochambres, the Association of European Chambers of Commerce. The findings from the BDI also sound almost resigned. The Commission’s last action plan for better enforcement of internal market rules dates back to 2020, says BDI internal market expert Christoph Bausch to Table.Briefings. “Everything the Commission has written is correct. The problem is that nothing has changed since then.” Instead, the BDI sees “even more fragmentation in the single market, especially in trade in goods”.
The Commission’s annual Single Market Report, which is to be presented today (Wednesday), and the draft of which is available to Table.Briefings, proves the business associations right. The value of intra-EU trade in goods relative to total GDP is only growing very slowly in the medium term and was even declining in 2023. Intra-EU trade in services is stagnating at a low level. The report also identifies a “pattern of increased internal market barriers”.
According to the Commission, the reasons for this are primarily to be found in the member states. “Obstacles often arise due to national regulation, especially due to ‘gold plating’ by the member states,” a Commission spokesperson told Table.Briefings. Gold plating is a practice in which member states implement EU directives but add national rules to them. Although this is legal, it leads to a fragmentation of the internal market.
Holger Kunze, Brussels office manager of the German Engineering Federation (VDMA), sees the reason for the fragmentation in the fact that the internal market was not a priority in the last Commission mandate. “There was a lack of courage and the will to step on the toes of the member states at the crucial moment,” said Kunze about the first Von der Leyen Commission.
In recent years, the Commission has increasingly relied on administrative coordination with member states to remove barriers to the single market. One example of this is the Single Market Enforcement Taskforce (SMET). This administrative cooperation is intended to prevent internal market hurdles from having to be tackled at a later date through more complex and confrontational infringement proceedings.
An evaluation of the Commission’s data on infringement procedures shows that they are being used less and less as an instrument. The trend towards fewer infringement proceedings is visible in many EU policy areas, but is particularly striking in the area of the internal market and industry.
The trend is also causing displeasure within the Commission, as several sources confirm. “At a technical level, Commission officials usually want to take action against infringements, but the political level is slow,” observes Ilya Bruggeman, Director of Internal Market Policy at the trade association Euro Commerce. “Processes are often stopped at the political level.” Sources within the responsible Directorate-General DG GROW also confirm that more consistent action against member states is not desired by the political leadership.
Holger Kunze from VDMA notes that the Commission does not consistently follow up on the infringement proceedings it launches. Bruggeman, whose association Euro Commerce submits several complaints about internal market hurdles to the Commission every year, observes that these are dealt with less quickly than in the past. There is also friction between the Directorates-General. While DG GROW is actually responsible for internal market issues, many standards and directives whose incorrect implementation can lead to internal market hurdles fall under the responsibility of other DGs for which the internal market is not a priority.
The Commission’s passivity also has an impact on the behavior of EU countries. “Member states know that what they are doing is a breach of contract, but they don’t care anymore,” says Bruggeman. The most obvious example of this is Hungary, where the government seems to systematically exclude non-Hungarian companies in some sectors. But Bruggeman also mentions other countries such as Romania. The member states should actually report new draft laws to the Commission, he says. But sometimes they ignore this requirement in order to keep the Commission in the dark.
There are signs that the problem has now also been recognized at a political level in the Commission. In the mission letter for Commission Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné, the Commission President instructs him to think about a “Single Market Barriers Prevention Act”. A spokeswoman said that the Commission would continue to use preventive and collaborative instruments, but would also use corrective measures such as infringement proceedings if necessary.
In the Competitiveness Compass, which Ursula von der Leyen will present on Wednesday and the draft of which is available to Table.Briefings, the Commission proposes to strengthen the SMET enforcement task force and to launch further harmonization measures.
There are discussions in senior Commission circles about raising the removal of internal market barriers from an administrative to a ministerial level in order to give the issue greater weight. However, it remains to be seen whether the Commission is also prepared to step on the toes of the member states again. With Stefanie Weber
Around two weeks after Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2022, Italy announced that it would end the country’s energy dependence on Russia within 24 to 30 months. The brains behind it: Roberto Cingolani, then Minister for Ecological Transformation in Italy.
Cingolani is once again striving for more independence – this time as CEO of the Italian arms all-rounder Leonardo. Since becoming CEO of Leonardo in May 2023, Cingolani has been working towards a more independent European arms industry. The Italian state holds around 30 percent of the arms company.
He recently told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that he had set himself the goal of driving forward alliances in the European defense industry: “We are big, but nowhere near as big as US companies, for example.” He therefore wants to create “European giants” that are “based on cooperation”. And he says something unusual for a defense manager: “If we plan more efficiently, we might not even need the two percent.”
That’s easy to say when you’re hoping for big business. In October, Cingolani sealed the foundation of Leonardo Rheinmetall Military Vehicles (LRMV) in Rome, arm in arm with Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger. After the German antitrust authorities approved the joint venture last week, Rheinmetall and Leonardo are hoping for a lucrative order from the Italian government. Italy plans to spend EUR 23 billion on armored vehicles in the coming years.
Leonardo is also hoping for a sales market beyond Italy. The EU, with its 27 member states and proximity to Russia and countries in the Middle East, offers a large sales market for national defense, said Cingolani at the meeting in Rome.
Leonardo produces helicopters, airplanes, weapons for maritime operations, and electronics. “A decathlete” is what his company would be if it were an athlete, Cingolani told the SZ. He tries to be one himself. He used to box, is said to enjoy cycling and motorcycling, and has published over 1,000 articles in his academic career as a physicist.
He headed the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa for ten years until Cingolani became Head of Innovation at Leonardo in 2019 and then Energy Minister under Mario Draghi. His university career took him to Japan, the USA, and Germany. From 1988 to 1991, he worked at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. In non-fiction books such as “Il mondo è piccolo come un’arancia” (“The World Is As Small as an Orange”) from 2014, he attempts to explain the possibilities of nanotechnology more broadly.
However, Italy’s energy dependency is not going so well at the moment. In 2024, Rome imported more gas from Russia than in the previous year. Gabriel Bub
It is worth taking a look at the EU accession candidate Serbia. President Aleksandar Vučić sacrificed his head of government yesterday, Tuesday, under pressure from the streets. The starting point for the ongoing protests is the collapse of the station canopy in Serbia’s second-largest city, Novi Sad, in November. Fifteen passers-by were killed and dozens were injured.
The station had been renovated as part of a modernization of the railroad infrastructure between Belgrade and Budapest under Chinese auspices. The authorities reacted first with a cover-up and then with repression to the accusations that the renovation had been botched.
This has really fueled the student protests, which have since been joined by professors, lawyers and farmers. The younger generation is rising up against the hopelessness in a country where you only have prospects as part of Aleksandar Vučić’s power structure. The catastrophe in Novi Sad stands for rampant corruption, nepotism, and abuse of power.
Head of government Miloš Vučević is nothing more than a pawn, the protests continued yesterday evening. For the first time in his twelve years in power, Aleksandar Vučić’s position is in danger.
Brussels, Berlin and Paris should be embarrassed that, unlike in Georgia or Moldova, there are no European flags to be seen at the rallies in Serbia. The students are not on good terms with the EU, as Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron and others have so far backed Aleksandar Vučić in the interests of stability and good business. But Brussels’ favorite autocrat may only be a sham giant and will soon be history.
The statements made by Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek have shaken some fundamental assumptions about the successful development of artificial intelligence. These were that you need a lot of money, gigantic computing power, and super talents to stay ahead in the global race for artificial intelligence. If you believe DeepSeek’s message, then you have to assume that talent and entrepreneurial spirit can more than make up for the lack of other resources.
What could be Europe’s answer to the new development? The race for AI is far from over, says Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier. With solid infrastructure and talent, Europe could achieve a lot. “Europe has everything it needs to be a leader in trustworthy AI: top talent, world-class supercomputers and innovative start-ups,” said Regnier. Seven AI factories are currently being set up across Europe. “We are driving innovation while ensuring the security of AI – this is our key competitive advantage.”
Digital Minister Volker Wissing says: “Europe’s only answer to this AI challenge is trustworthiness.” An AI that is trustworthy could be a hallmark of Germany and Europe, said Wissing in Berlin on Tuesday. However, “regulation alone is not enough”, the minister added. “We have to regulate wisely.” Europe must not fall into a regulatory frenzy. “We must therefore urgently ensure that innovations are not only developed here but that their implementation also works well.”
And, of course, Europe needs more risk capital. “We need to address the issue of taxing losses resulting from risk investments,” Wissing demanded. “We need the digital single market and we also need the capital markets union in order to mobilize our financial potential in Europe to a greater extent.”
The issue of financing also plays a role in attracting the necessary talent. “Stargate’s announcement that it wants to invest USD 500 billion in AI infrastructure in the USA is attracting AI experts. That’s the problem in Europe,” says Silviu Homoceanu, founder and CTO of the AI start-up Deltia, which optimizes industrial processes. It is currently very easy for AI workers to go to the USA because they can easily find a job there. “We suffer from that here in Europe. The most important thing is to retain people and motivate them to build something here.”
It is not so important that Europe is currently lagging behind in terms of development. “Europe can build on existing developments,” says Homoceanu. This is all the more true as some companies – such as DeepSeek – are developing their models open source. Deltia itself does not use Large Language Models (LLMs), but rather its own development and adapts the AI to the needs of industrial clients. “For security reasons alone, our customers would not put their data in a cloud,” says the AI founder. One of Europe’s answers to the global AI challenges is therefore to contribute its industrial expertise to development.
The development of Large Language Models has now reached its peak (Peak AI), believes Bruno Kramm, spokesperson for Central Germany in the AI association. Progress has only been marginal, which indicates that new technological approaches are needed. “European initiatives such as XLSTM offer promising prospects here, especially through innovative model architectures that go beyond the previous limits of classic LLMs.”
To explain: XLSTM is an improved AI model that can recognize patterns in long and complex data and better understand how things are related over time. “To remain competitive, Europe must strengthen cooperation within the EU, improve funding structures, and rethink regulatory hurdles,” says Kramm.
If – as DeepSeek claims – there is a technology that makes machine learning AI more efficient, then this means “that the EU and its member states must not only invest money and time in increasing computer resources but must also continue to focus on research,” says Sebastian Raible. He manages relations with the EU for the open-source business association APELL. Efficiency also depends heavily on the quality of the data used. “And Europe is well positioned in both areas – research and data quality.”
DeepSeek has very clear and well-known disadvantages. These include, for example, the obvious censorship of unwanted content. There are also concerns about data protection and the protection of trade secrets. “European counter-offers are therefore needed quickly,” says Raible. The best way to achieve this is through cooperation: Open source as a development model allows companies to work together and still continue to compete in the market. “In this way, the resources distributed across the EU in the form of small and medium-sized companies can be effectively combined and used to our advantage.”
For the digital association Bitkom, DeepSeek shows that the AI market is much more dynamic than expected. “Neither the winners nor the losers have been decided yet,” says Susanne Dehmel, a member of the Bitkom Executive Board. “This is good news for the discussion about digital sovereignty in Germany and Europe.”
However, Europe should neither be in a state of shock because of Stargate nor euphoria because of DeepSeek. “Without our own efforts, we will not make any progress with AI.” In addition to money and more support, this also includes “not always perceiving artificial intelligence first and foremost as a threat, but as an opportunity and making the regulatory framework truly innovation-friendly”.
The internal market is the EU’s core business. However, in recent years, the dismantling of internal market barriers has become less of a priority. The Commission uses infringement proceedings less frequently than it used to, and internal market hurdles are increasing. More and more business associations are complaining about the Commission’s passivity. However, there are signs that it has recognized the problem.
“The internal market hurdles are the same as they were 20 years ago,” says Frederico Martins, Senior Policy Advisor at Eurochambres, the Association of European Chambers of Commerce. The findings from the BDI also sound almost resigned. The Commission’s last action plan for better enforcement of internal market rules dates back to 2020, says BDI internal market expert Christoph Bausch to Table.Briefings. “Everything the Commission has written is correct. The problem is that nothing has changed since then.” Instead, the BDI sees “even more fragmentation in the single market, especially in trade in goods”.
The Commission’s annual Single Market Report, which is to be presented today (Wednesday), and the draft of which is available to Table.Briefings, proves the business associations right. The value of intra-EU trade in goods relative to total GDP is only growing very slowly in the medium term and was even declining in 2023. Intra-EU trade in services is stagnating at a low level. The report also identifies a “pattern of increased internal market barriers”.
According to the Commission, the reasons for this are primarily to be found in the member states. “Obstacles often arise due to national regulation, especially due to ‘gold plating’ by the member states,” a Commission spokesperson told Table.Briefings. Gold plating is a practice in which member states implement EU directives but add national rules to them. Although this is legal, it leads to a fragmentation of the internal market.
Holger Kunze, Brussels office manager of the German Engineering Federation (VDMA), sees the reason for the fragmentation in the fact that the internal market was not a priority in the last Commission mandate. “There was a lack of courage and the will to step on the toes of the member states at the crucial moment,” said Kunze about the first Von der Leyen Commission.
In recent years, the Commission has increasingly relied on administrative coordination with member states to remove barriers to the single market. One example of this is the Single Market Enforcement Taskforce (SMET). This administrative cooperation is intended to prevent internal market hurdles from having to be tackled at a later date through more complex and confrontational infringement proceedings.
An evaluation of the Commission’s data on infringement procedures shows that they are being used less and less as an instrument. The trend towards fewer infringement proceedings is visible in many EU policy areas, but is particularly striking in the area of the internal market and industry.
The trend is also causing displeasure within the Commission, as several sources confirm. “At a technical level, Commission officials usually want to take action against infringements, but the political level is slow,” observes Ilya Bruggeman, Director of Internal Market Policy at the trade association Euro Commerce. “Processes are often stopped at the political level.” Sources within the responsible Directorate-General DG GROW also confirm that more consistent action against member states is not desired by the political leadership.
Holger Kunze from VDMA notes that the Commission does not consistently follow up on the infringement proceedings it launches. Bruggeman, whose association Euro Commerce submits several complaints about internal market hurdles to the Commission every year, observes that these are dealt with less quickly than in the past. There is also friction between the Directorates-General. While DG GROW is actually responsible for internal market issues, many standards and directives whose incorrect implementation can lead to internal market hurdles fall under the responsibility of other DGs for which the internal market is not a priority.
The Commission’s passivity also has an impact on the behavior of EU countries. “Member states know that what they are doing is a breach of contract, but they don’t care anymore,” says Bruggeman. The most obvious example of this is Hungary, where the government seems to systematically exclude non-Hungarian companies in some sectors. But Bruggeman also mentions other countries such as Romania. The member states should actually report new draft laws to the Commission, he says. But sometimes they ignore this requirement in order to keep the Commission in the dark.
There are signs that the problem has now also been recognized at a political level in the Commission. In the mission letter for Commission Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné, the Commission President instructs him to think about a “Single Market Barriers Prevention Act”. A spokeswoman said that the Commission would continue to use preventive and collaborative instruments, but would also use corrective measures such as infringement proceedings if necessary.
In the Competitiveness Compass, which Ursula von der Leyen will present on Wednesday and the draft of which is available to Table.Briefings, the Commission proposes to strengthen the SMET enforcement task force and to launch further harmonization measures.
There are discussions in senior Commission circles about raising the removal of internal market barriers from an administrative to a ministerial level in order to give the issue greater weight. However, it remains to be seen whether the Commission is also prepared to step on the toes of the member states again. With Stefanie Weber
Around two weeks after Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2022, Italy announced that it would end the country’s energy dependence on Russia within 24 to 30 months. The brains behind it: Roberto Cingolani, then Minister for Ecological Transformation in Italy.
Cingolani is once again striving for more independence – this time as CEO of the Italian arms all-rounder Leonardo. Since becoming CEO of Leonardo in May 2023, Cingolani has been working towards a more independent European arms industry. The Italian state holds around 30 percent of the arms company.
He recently told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that he had set himself the goal of driving forward alliances in the European defense industry: “We are big, but nowhere near as big as US companies, for example.” He therefore wants to create “European giants” that are “based on cooperation”. And he says something unusual for a defense manager: “If we plan more efficiently, we might not even need the two percent.”
That’s easy to say when you’re hoping for big business. In October, Cingolani sealed the foundation of Leonardo Rheinmetall Military Vehicles (LRMV) in Rome, arm in arm with Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger. After the German antitrust authorities approved the joint venture last week, Rheinmetall and Leonardo are hoping for a lucrative order from the Italian government. Italy plans to spend EUR 23 billion on armored vehicles in the coming years.
Leonardo is also hoping for a sales market beyond Italy. The EU, with its 27 member states and proximity to Russia and countries in the Middle East, offers a large sales market for national defense, said Cingolani at the meeting in Rome.
Leonardo produces helicopters, airplanes, weapons for maritime operations, and electronics. “A decathlete” is what his company would be if it were an athlete, Cingolani told the SZ. He tries to be one himself. He used to box, is said to enjoy cycling and motorcycling, and has published over 1,000 articles in his academic career as a physicist.
He headed the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa for ten years until Cingolani became Head of Innovation at Leonardo in 2019 and then Energy Minister under Mario Draghi. His university career took him to Japan, the USA, and Germany. From 1988 to 1991, he worked at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. In non-fiction books such as “Il mondo è piccolo come un’arancia” (“The World Is As Small as an Orange”) from 2014, he attempts to explain the possibilities of nanotechnology more broadly.
However, Italy’s energy dependency is not going so well at the moment. In 2024, Rome imported more gas from Russia than in the previous year. Gabriel Bub
