The European Commission has issued a Call for Evidence for the Cloud and AI Development Act, inviting stakeholder feedback, from public administrations and private entitites, on its initiative to address the computational capacity gap in the EU, particularly for cloud and AI development. This initiative is part of the AI Continent Action Plan and aims to enhance the EU's competitiveness and sovereignty in the digital economy.
The document outlines the political context, highlighting a significant gap between the EU's current computational infrastructure and the demands of AI development. The initiative aims to address the challenges hindering the expansion of the EU's data centre capacity, including difficulties in accessing natural resources, slow permitting processes, and high capital requirements. It also aims to promote sustainable solutions and technological innovation in data centre operations.
The initiative’s objectives include advancing research and innovation in resource-efficient data processing, tripling the EU's data centre capacity within the next 5–7 years, and ensuring highly secure EU-based cloud capacity for critical use cases. The Commission is a range of policy options, from non-legislative measures to a comprehensive regulatory approach, including the potential creation of an independent agency to manage joint investments and enforcement.
The initiative is expected to have economic, social, and environmental impacts, including the stimulation of research and development, the enhancement of digital public services, and the promotion sustainable infrastructure. An impact assessment, supported by consultations with stakeholders and evidence collection, will be conducted in 2025 to inform the Commission's proposal.
The consultation aims to gather views from a wide range of stakeholders, including public authorities, cloud and data centre operators, AI developers, financial institutions, and citizens. The feedback will help shape the Commission's understanding of the problem, possible solutions, and the potential impacts of different policy options. The consultation is available here.
