Europe is not only competing on productivity. It is competing on the meaning of intelligence itself.
Mario Draghi’s recent speech at the Politecnico di Milano was not simply a call for Europe to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence.
It was a deeper warning.
Europe risks falling behind not because it lacks technology, capital, or talent — but because it lacks a coherent way of thinking about intelligence, competitiveness, and identity in the age of AI.
The real question raised by Draghi is not whether Europe should adopt AI.
It is how — and on whose terms.
Why Draghi Speaks Now
Europe finds itself at a familiar crossroads. Productivity growth is weak, innovation is fragmented, and global competition is increasingly shaped by technological scale. In this context, AI appears as both a promise and a threat.
For many, the temptation is obvious: imitate the dominant models emerging from the United States or China. Invest more, scale faster, automate harder.
Draghi’s intervention implicitly challenges this reflex. His message suggests that Europe’s problem is not insufficient speed, but insufficient strategy. Without a clear understanding of what role AI should play within European society, markets, and institutions, acceleration alone risks deepening existing structural weaknesses.
Europe’s Structural Gap
Europe’s gap is often described as technological. In reality, it is structural.
Unlike its competitors, Europe is not built around a single market, a single regulatory culture, or a single innovation ecosystem. Its strength lies elsewhere: in institutions, legal frameworks, financial infrastructures, and a long tradition of balancing economic efficiency with social cohesion.
This complexity is frequently portrayed as a disadvantage in the AI race. Yet it may be Europe’s most underappreciated asset.
The challenge is not to eliminate this complexity, but to turn it into an advantage — especially when adopting technologies that will increasingly shape decision-making, labor, markets, and governance.
AI as Infrastructure, Not as a Rival
Much of the public debate frames AI as a rival to human intelligence and labor. This framing fuels fear: fear of job losses, loss of control, and loss of human relevance.
A more productive perspective sees AI not as a competitor, but as infrastructure.
Just as financial markets rely on settlement systems, payment rails, and post-trade infrastructures to function reliably, modern economies will increasingly rely on AI as a cognitive layer that supports coordination, analysis, and decision-making.
In this view, AI does not replace the human. It reshapes the environment in which human judgment operates.
Europe is uniquely positioned to develop this approach because it already understands the value of invisible infrastructures — from payments and clearing to regulatory oversight and institutional trust.
The Risk of Imitation
The greatest risk Europe faces is not technological inferiority, but imitation without reflection.
The dominant global narrative around AI emphasizes scale, speed, and concentration of power. This “Manhattan-style” approach treats intelligence as a resource to be accumulated and deployed, often detached from social and institutional context.
If Europe adopts this model uncritically, it will always remain one step behind — competing on someone else’s terrain, under someone else’s assumptions.
Imitation would not only fail strategically; it would erode the very foundations that make Europe distinctive.
A European Alternative: Relational Intelligence
Europe’s alternative does not lie in rejecting AI, but in redefining it.
Rather than treating intelligence as a standalone capability embedded in machines, Europe can frame AI as a relational phenomenon — emerging from the interaction between humans, institutions, data, and systems.
In this relational approach, intelligence is not reduced to computation. It is shaped by context, norms, accountability, and purpose.
This perspective aligns naturally with Europe’s humanist tradition, its legal culture, and its emphasis on dignity and responsibility. It also offers a way to move beyond fear: AI ceases to be a rival and becomes a partner in a shared cognitive environment.
If AI remains a rival, fear will slow Europe down.
If AI becomes a relation, Europe can lead through identity rather than imitation.
What This Means for Europe
This shift has concrete implications:
- For policy makers, AI should be treated as strategic infrastructure, governed to enhance human agency rather than replace it.
- For financial markets, AI can strengthen trust, resilience, and efficiency across post-trade, settlement, and payment systems.
- For competitiveness, Europe’s advantage lies not in raw scale, but in the quality of its institutions and its capacity to integrate technology into complex social systems.
The question is no longer whether Europe can keep up in the AI race.
It is whether Europe can redefine the race itself.
Europe’s challenge is not to win on terms defined elsewhere.
It is to articulate a different vision of intelligence — one rooted in its history, institutions, and humanist foundations.
If Europe succeeds, AI will not diminish the human role.
It will amplify it.
This article opens the Building Europe Papers series, exploring how Europe can rebuild competitiveness through institutions, markets, and strategic infrastructure.