Indispensable, Not Independent

Europe can win the AI race that matters most to its economy: the race to deploy AI well across productivity, trusted infrastructure, industrial capability, public-sector performance and regulated sectors. The report argues that this contest has barely begun. Only about one in five EU enterprises had adopted AI in 2025, which it reads as deployment headroom rather than failure, and it positions the Nordics as Europe’s trusted proving ground for regulated, energy-conscious, high-trust deployment.

Sovereignty, as the report defines it, is the ability to choose, govern, audit, switch and scale AI systems without unacceptable strategic, legal, operational or economic dependency. The goal is competitive interdependence: building capabilities others depend on and cannot route around, rather than trying to replicate the US or Chinese frontier stack. Data residency is necessary but not sufficient. Jurisdiction, auditability, portability, data rights and provider optionality have to be fixed at procurement, because those choices lock in for roughly a decade.

For organisational leaders, the report contends that value depends less on the number of pilots than on operating-model change: redesigned workflows, accountable owners, aligned incentives and AI fluency at board and C-suite level. It draws on Eurostat, the Stanford AI Index, McKinsey, OECD and EIB evidence alongside the Institute’s own advisory observations, and labels estimates and practitioner judgements as such.