Europe's AI Leverage Comes From Its Market, Not Its Models

A dispatch argues that Europe can shape global AI behavior through the enforcement powers of its AI Act, because companies need access to the European market even though Europe has no leading models of its own.

A common view holds that Europe lacks leverage in AI geopolitics because it has no frontier models of its own; the dispatch disputes that.
Companies that want European customers must follow the EU AI Act, which obliges providers of the most advanced models to assess and reduce systemic risks.
The European Commission lists four such risks: bioattacks, loss of control, cyberattacks, and manipulation at scale, and the AI Office can now monitor compliance and ask for models to be submitted for evaluation.
Politico questions whether US firms will open closed models to regulators and how Brussels will handle Chinese open-source models, framing this as a sign of Europe lagging in development.
The author counters that US and Chinese competition keeps the European market valuable, and that having no domestic champion lets Europe regulate more freely than the US has been willing to.