Siemens and SAP CEOs urge the EU to revise its AI regulations

Two of Germany’s most influential tech leaders are pushing the European Union to re-evaluate its plan to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). 

Roland Busch, the chief executive officer of Siemens, and Christian Klein, the head of SAP, have already gone public, saying that Europe’s current laws are too narrow and could impede innovation on the continent.

In a joint interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Busch and Klein said the EU needed a smarter, more agile mode of administrative governance, which did not stifle but encouraged the spirit of innovation. They insisted that, though safety and transparency in AI are important, how current laws are being drafted makes it difficult for European companies to compete with international counterparts.

Europe is confronted with stiff global competition, especially from the US and China, and one of the biggest obstacles preventing the size and strength of its companies from catching up is viewed as excessive regulation.

The two CEOs say that without change, the EU will fall further behind in the global competition to develop cutting-edge AI and digital technology.

Siemens CEO warns EU AI rules could stifle innovation and burden businesses

The EU’s AI Act, adopted into law in 2023, is central to the tech leader’s concerns. The Act will govern the development and use of artificial intelligence by classifying artificial intelligence systems into four levels of risk: unacceptable risk, high risk, substantial risk, and low risk. Companies must follow data usage, transparency, and safety rules depending on the category.

Roland Busch added that overlapping regulations (including the EU’s Data Act) result in confusion and unnecessary extra burden. Its rulebook, known as the Data Act, sets strict boundaries on how firms can use consumer and corporate data—boundaries Busch says are “toxic” to creating modern digital business models.

Current laws are seen as stifling growth rather than supporting it, with concerns that Europe is imposing heavy regulations too early in the innovation process.

Curiously, unlike several tech giants, including Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Meta, which have endorsed open letters to the EU encouraging a delay of the AI Act, Busch didn’t support these efforts. He said those letters didn’t go far enough and didn’t contain substantive reform proposals.

Siemens and SAP urge EU to unlock data access

Europe’s challenge isn’t infrastructure or computing power, said Christian Klein, co-chief executive of SAP, but rather the region’s difficulty accessing and using the already created data.

An increasing number of people worry that too much attention is being paid to building data centers, when the real change needed would be in reforming how data is managed and repurposed. Without firm data governance leadership, the best information in the world may not make a difference.

“We are sitting on a treasure trove of data in Europe, but we are not yet able to tap into it,” Busch told the newspaper. “It’s not access to computing capacity that we’re currently lacking, but the release of resources.”

Both CEOs say Europe should focus on opening up data while protecting users’ privacy. Only then, they say, can the continent truly compete with other regions moving aggressively to invest in artificial intelligence.

If the EU revises its approach now, it can still make the global tech race its own with a greater emphasis on enabling innovation and less on pre-emptive counteraction.

In the run-up to the passing of the EU AI Act, Siemens and SAP had been among those registering concern over its potential impact on European competitiveness. The two companies had previously warned in a joint letter, addressed to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Europe’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, that the proposed Data Act could compound Europe’s vulnerability by enforcing the sharing of key business data.

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