The EU AI Act Newsletter #100: The European Way

Celebrating 100 editions of the newsletter with Virkkunen's vision for the AI Continent, the Omnibus endgame, and Europe's frontier AI access question. This is the 100th edition of the newsletter. To mark the occasion, I've opened an Ask Me Anything in the Substack chat – questions, reflections and predictions all welcome. Legislative Process Building AI the European way: Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, reflects on the first year of the Commission's AI Continent Action Plan, which was built around five pillars: infrastructure, data, skills, adoption and simplification. On the infrastructure side, 19 AI Factories have been deployed across European supercomputers, whilst the proposed AI Gigafactories concept has already attracted 76 expressions of interest spanning 16 Member States. Turning to adoption, €1 billion in funding calls has been mobilised for strategic sectors, alongside targeted initiatives such as AI-powered cancer and cardiovascular screening centres and a Grand Challenge competition to develop sovereign European AI models. Meanwhile, the AI Omnibus, delivered in November, seeks to adjust the the AI Act's timeline and address implementation challenges. Virkkunen frames these together as a distinctly European approach that manages risk whilst encouraging innovation. Finally, she announces a forthcoming tech [...] ---Outline:(00:49) Legislative Process(02:06) Analyses(07:29) Whats Next?(08:30) Discussion about this post(08:34) Ready for more? --- First published: April 20th, 2026 Source: https://artificialintelligenceact.substack.com/p/the-eu-ai-act-newsletter-100-the --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.