While artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping global trade and economic power, Europe is at risk of falling into the trap of technology “addiction, according to a new report.
Insurance company Allianz’'s report suggests that the world economy is being reorganized around technology industries such as cloud computing, data centers and semiconductors, where Europe’ is weaker than the US and Asia’.
Asia, this part of the world economy %With 65’i and seven of the world's top 10 AI exporters, it dominates the export of AI-related goods. This sector grew from $1 trillion in 2014’te (880 billion euros) to $3.8 trillion in 2025’te (3.3 trillion euros).
The U.S. has tripled its AI-related imports since 2023’, largely due to the country's investments in data centers and cloud computing. It is also home to almost half of the world's data centers.
Meanwhile, Europe’'s imports related to artificial intelligence were only in the same period. %It increased by 40, which highlighted what Allianz’ describes as an expanding “ infrastructure vulnerability, ”.
“ has a modest role in the bloc's AI supply chain, which leaves the region facing ” with limited strategic leverage and meaningful exposure to supply chain disruptions, the report said.
American ‘ connected to termination key’
The American technology giants, Avrupa’'s operational computing capacity %It controls 40’ and nearly half of its upcoming data center projects.
These firms benefit from a weak market for private investment in companies and low competition from local firms, the report said.
USA also Europe’'s cloud computing market ’'s market share, Avrupa’'s corporate software revenue ’una and customer management software %It has a market share of 73’. This causes players outside the U.S. to compete for “ remaining margins. In the report, “ said that structural constraints, fragmented regulation, complex permission processes, network connectivity delays, the absence of a native hyperscaler, and limited VC or state-sponsored funding reinforce this dependency.
Europe is also dependent on hardware outputs from Asya’, such as graphics processing units (GPU’s) required for training AI models. Block, all IT equipment ’sini imports more than half of the hardware materials needed for its data centers from five Asian countries: Taiwan, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.
The report found that this dependence on Asian hardware complemented ’'s dependence on “, which would increase the ” of the USA if no independent investment was made in that area.
According to the report, “Europe, within this framework, is constantly using the US’ termination key for ‘'s cloud data, under the threat of ’; This means that the country can shut down these services at any time. “If AI-related markets are created abroad, this will widen the EU-US service imbalance.”
Europe’'s double gap‘
Unlike the U.S. ’, where private companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence infrastructure, or China ’, where the government facilitates investments, “ is suffering from insufficient private capital and fragmented public policy, which the report calls open ”.
To avoid falling into the trap of ’ technology addiction, the European Union must eliminate regulatory and capital constraints for “, the report said.
For example, the report notes that the combination of limited land options in cities, complex permitting processes and environmental regulations makes it difficult to build data centers. Some projects may take up to four years to come to life.
Data center projects in parts of Avrupa’ could take up to five years, the report said, as providers could not connect to some aging power grids with limited capacity and a new center could not meet peak power demands.
Despite these concerns, the report suggests that Avrupa’ still has some competitive advantages in the areas of industrial engineering, automated and regulatory artificial intelligence.
France and Sweden applauded initiatives such as independent computing projects aimed at taking public services in ’ out of the hands of US technology companies such as Google or Amazon Web Services (AWS) and instead investing in European solutions.
These initiatives promised “ counterweights, but their scale was still modest, the report said.
