Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Conclusions from the French-German Al lndustry Executives' Dialogue
January 2025
On 24th January 2025, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the French embassy in Germany, with the support of Inria, gathered industry, innovation and research leaders as well as policy makers from the EU Commission, France and Germany in Berlin for the first French-German AI Industry Executives' Dialogue.
In the current context where European enterprises face the double need of increasing their economic competitiveness while simultaneously striving for technological sovereignty, this dialogue aimed at discussing actions to shape a more competitive, sovereign and sustainable AI in and for Europe. In line with the spirit of the Aachen Treaty, revitalising French-German collaboration on Artificial Intelligence is particularly relevant and urgent for the future of Europe.
A Call for Action from French and German Research and lndustry Stakeholders:
Towards an industry-led French-German AI Roadmap for Europe
Industry, technology, innovation and applied research stakeholders from France and Germany call for swift action in order to address the challenges of Europe's digital sovereignty and overall competitiveness.
They share the following priorities for the way forward in Europe:
- Simplified, business and innovation friendly regulations, in particular the implementation of AI Act and Data act
- A robust and scalable AI infrastructure. This includes a European cloud service ecosystem with a single, user-friendly certification process and trusted data spaces to share data, effective AI model training and finetuning, as well as availability of computing power
- Stable, affordable and sustainable energy supply
- Talent acquisition and development strategies effectively attracting and retaining skilled professionals in Europe and from abroad
- Venture capital investment and a strong European Savings and Investments Union - to harness the innovation potential in France and Germany and upscale European Champions
- Focus on strategic verticals and applied language models and promotion of frugal and sustainable AI
To achieve these goals, they share interest to continue this dialogue and to strengthen synergies among industry, research and innovation ecosystems, in order to:
- Launch a coalition of the willing aiming at developing a joint FrenchGerman AI industry-led roadmap identifying actions and commitments from stakeholders. Fraunhofer and Inria have proposed to faciIitate this process.
- Identify several lighthouse projects that are catalysts of existing French and German innovations (e.g. edge computing, data spaces, label for sustainable AI) and can be scaled up rapidly.
- Collaborate in developing AI applied use cases for industry in strategic sectors such as health, energy, defence, cyber or robotics.
- Unite researchers, innovators and industry leaders by strengthening the French-German dimension of ongoing and Future actions, including EU initiatives such as GENAl4EU, EDIC.
- Incentivise the development and use of European AI solutions by European governments and corporates, for instance through public and private procurements, partnerships between corporates and start-ups.
- Identify sustainable financing models, for instance AI Bonds and other forms of capital investment.
- Provide support to like-minded network initiatives, such as the European AI championship initiative aiming at gathering AI providers, investors and industry.
- To promote this agenda in major policy discussions at international, national and regional levels.
- To encourage relevant French, German stakeholders to join this call for action.
- To convene for a second Dialogue within 9 months in order to evaluate progress and agree on next steps
Now is the time to take action!
lndustry, applied research and innovation players must join forces.
Let's shape the future of European AI together!