MIL-OSI Europe: Written question – US AI chip export restrictions: a challenge to EU unity and technological sovereignty – E-000483/2025

Question for written answer  E-000483/2025
to the Commission
Rule 144
Virginijus Sinkevičius (Verts/ALE), Alexandra Geese (Verts/ALE), Anna Cavazzini (Verts/ALE), Adam Jarubas (PPE), Mārtiņš Staķis (Verts/ALE), Kim Van Sparrentak (Verts/ALE), Reinier Van Lanschot (Verts/ALE), Pierre Jouvet (S&D), Sara Matthieu (Verts/ALE), Vilija Blinkevičiūtė (S&D), Dainius Žalimas (Renew), David Cormand (Verts/ALE), Benedetta Scuderi (Verts/ALE), Paulo Cunha (PPE), Irena Joveva (Renew), Alex Agius Saliba (S&D), Elena Sancho Murillo (S&D), Magdalena Adamowicz (PPE)

The recent US decision to impose export restrictions on advanced AI chips has created a significant challenge for the EU’s single market and technological sovereignty. By categorising Member States into different tiers, with some countries facing caps on AI chip imports, the United States has effectively fragmented the EU’s unified approach to AI development. This decision is particularly concerning given the US’s status as a strategic partner and the EU’s reliance on US-made AI chips. It is crucial to engage with the new US administration to seek a unified treatment of the EU as a bloc.

How will the Commission address this challenge and what concrete steps will it take to:

• 1.mitigate the potential negative impacts on EU countries facing export caps, ensuring solidarity with, and support for, those Member States whose access to these critical technologies has been restricted?
• 2.accelerate the development of the EU’s domestic AI chip production capabilities to reduce dependence on external suppliers?
• 3.create the legal conditions for a unified EU export control regime in the framework of the review of the Dual Use Export Control Regulation[1] in order to deny third country actors the possibility to divide the Member States?

Submitted: 4.2.2025

• [1] Regulation (EU) 2021/821 of 20 May 2021 setting up a Union regime for the control of exports, brokering, technical assistance, transit and transfer of dual-use items, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/821/oj.