Draghi: “Europe Must Build AI Data Centers to Secure Growth and Sovereignty”

[Financial News] As Europe falls far behind the United States and China in the artificial intelligence (AI) race, calls are growing for the region to accelerate the construction of AI data centers to secure both growth and sovereignty.
Mario Draghi, a former Italian prime minister and former European Central Bank (ECB) president, wrote in an opinion piece for the British daily Financial Times (FT) on the 11th local time that Europe’s growth had slowed noticeably since the pandemic. He noted that the productivity gap between the Eurozone and the United States had widened from $9 per hour in 2018 to $21 in 2025.
Draghi said, “The widespread adoption of AI is likely to be the most promising path” for stimulating growth in Europe. However, he explained, “AI-driven growth conflicts with Europe’s efforts to secure sovereignty because Europe has almost no stake in the AI value chain.”
He also pointed out, “The areas in which Europe can secure AI sovereignty are limited,” adding, “Europe’s leading research institutes currently cannot compete financially with their counterparts in the United States and China, and the development of cutting-edge semiconductors is also far behind.”
However, he added, “Europe has abundant public-sector data, including decades of health records and data collected by national statistical offices,” and said, “Data is the only area in which Europe can still retain sovereignty, as well as an area with enormous potential to generate growth.”
Draghi emphasized that Europe must secure control over the storage and processing of this data to make use of these assets. That, he said, means the region needs large-scale AI data centers.
He said the European Union (EU) currently accounts for less than 5% of global AI computing capacity, while the United States accounts for 75%. He added that the gap between the supply and demand for data centers in Europe is estimated at 3 gigawatts (GW) and is expected to widen to 14 GW by 2030.
Draghi said, “As sovereignty becomes more important, this capacity shortfall will have a tangible impact,” and called for expanded data-center construction, stating, “A substantial share of the infrastructure used to process and store European data must be located on European soil.”
He cited complex permitting procedures and demand spread across millions of companies as factors delaying data-center investment in Europe.
He warned that if Europe fails to close its AI infrastructure gap with the United States and other countries, “European companies will be unable to keep their data within Europe and may abandon AI adoption, or the high cost of computing will slow the widespread adoption of AI in low-value-added industries.”

[email protected] International Affairs Specialist Lee Seok-woo Reporter