The chorus of outrage that has risen against the postponement of AI rules reveals the deep state of denial in which much of Europe lives. These critics, well ensconced in their ivory tower of moral superiority, scream that we are selling our souls to Big Tech. But the reality is much more crude: without this thorough clamping down on bureaucracy, we won’t have a soul to sell – there will be no digital economy to protect.
Mario Draghi wasn’t just “well intentioned” in his now famous (I hope) report. He signed the death certificate of the current model. Europe has become addicted to regulating what it does not produce. We suffer from chronic legislative disease, which turns any attempt at innovation into an administrative obstacle course. Thinking that our companies can compete with the aggressiveness of China or the (almost) unlimited capital of the USA with both hands tied behind their backs by “cabinet ideas” from Brussels is not optimism, it is hallucination.
While we debate over “ethics in algorithms” and create triplicate forms to “ensure compliance”, our global rivals are training models on everything they can find on the internet, capturing market shares we will never regain. Of course ethics are important, but ethics without economic power is irrelevant. A Europe that only consumes other people’s technology, subjugated to the rules of Silicon Valley or Beijing, because it was incapable of creating its own, is a Europe without sovereignty.
This postponement is the minimum required. If we want to stop being an open-air museum and become a player Globally, “hyper-regulation” must end. To the startups They need data, not decrees. They need a “jungle” to grow, not walled gardens. The choice is brutal, but simple: either we accept getting our hands dirty in the arena of real competition, or we remain immaculate, pure… and perfectly irrelevant.