The European Commission said on 16 September that it welcomes a plan by 19 member states to create the first Important Project of Common European Interest, or IPCEI, in artificial intelligence.
An IPCEI is a state aid instrument. It lets EU governments fund a project jointly at levels competition rules would normally block, provided the Commission accepts that it serves a common European interest and that the money would not otherwise have been spent. Earlier IPCEIs covered batteries, microelectronics and hydrogen. This one is coordinated by Germany, covers what the Commission calls the entire AI stack, and is aimed at decentralised, commonly accessible AI services.
The participating states are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Eleven will start pre-notifying their individual state aid projects during September; the Commission then assesses whether each meets the IPCEI criteria.
What the announcement lacks is as telling as what it contains: no funding figure, no participating companies, no timetable beyond that pre-notification step. IPCEIs have historically taken years to move from this stage to money reaching recipients. For now this is a coordinated statement of intent by nineteen governments — a real signal about European AI policy, but not yet a budget.