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Public AI and Europe’s Digital Sovereignty

January 13 @ 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm UTC+1

How can Europe develop public AI systems that also ensure competition and sovereignty?

Join us on 13 January 2026, from 12:30 to 14:30, at the European Parliament MEP Salon in Brussels for an lunch event on Public AI and digital sovereignty. The event is co-hosted by MEP Michał Kobosko (Renew) and MEP Sergey Lagodinsky (Greens) with Bertelsmann Stiftung, Open Future, Mozilla Foundation, and Democratic Tech Alliance.

As Europe struggles with its dependency on American and Chinese AI models, our research offers an alternative vision: public AI is a vision of developing European, open source AI models that can spur innovation, support the public interest, and generate economic value. The event will discuss how public AI models and applications can be developed in the European Union, as a core component of the AI Continent Action Plan.

Public AI systems make AI capabilities openly accessible, serve the public interest, and operate under public control or ownership. These systems are essential for achieving European technological sovereignty, spurring European R&D, and generating market value as solutions that can be deployed by European businesses.

During the event, we will present examples of open source AI development and public AI solutions. We will present recommendations on how the European AI Continent Action Plan can support public AI in Europe, and discuss what more needs to be done.

We will also present our new policy brief—produced with Bertelsmann Stiftung—exploring pathways for developing public and sovereign AI solutions in Europe.

Speakers include:

  • MEP Michał Kobosko
  • MEP Sergey Lagodinsky
  • Grażyna Piesiewicz, Head of Unit for High Performance Computing and Applications, DG CONNECT
  • Nicolas Flores-Herr, Team Lead Foundation Models & Gen AI Systems, Fraunhofer Institute
  • Ivan Yamshchikov, Chief Product Officer, Pleias
  • Antoine Isaac, Europeana
  • Maximilian Gahntz, AI Policy Lead, Mozilla
  • Sebastiano Toffaletti, Secretary General, Digital SME Alliance
  • Raegan MacDonald, Director of Policy Leadership, AspirationTech
  • Alek Tarkowski, Director of Strategy, Open Future
  • Felix Sieker, Digitalization and Public Welfare Project Manager, Bertelsmann Stiftung

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