Europe’s top tech CEOs launch lobby group targeting von der Leyen

Seven of Europe’s biggest technology firms have established a permanent lobbying coalition, the European Tech Creators, granting them direct dialogue with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Their core demand is a rapid acceleration of deregulation, easier merger approvals, and the completion of the single market. The group, which commands €417 billion in annual revenue, nearly €1.1 trillion in market capitalization, and employs roughly one million people globally, argues that Europe’s regulatory environment is stifling its own competitiveness.

“You cannot make very complex policies and then say we’re going to simplify,” said ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet during a press conference in Brussels on Monday. “It’s a lot better if you do the right policy in the first place.”

The coalition’s message is direct: Europe is regulating itself into obsolescence. Fouquet, alongside Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, outgoing Ericsson chief Börje Ekholm, and Mistral co-founder Arthur Mensch, met with von der Leyen to push for fewer rules, streamlined mergers, and a unified market. Ekholm highlighted the fragmentation problem, noting that Europe’s more than 100 telecom operators serve an average of just five million customers each, compared to 450 million per operator in China. “We have allowed the market to be fully fragmented, giving no one the scale to be competitive,” he said.

The group appears to be seeing early results. Following their late April meeting with von der Leyen, EU institutions moved within a week toward a provisional deal on the Digital Omnibus on AI on May 7. This agreement postpones high-risk AI system obligations by 16 months and extends simplified compliance rules to companies with up to 750 employees. It marks the first set of amendments to the AI Act since its adoption in 2024. While Germany had independently pushed for lighter rules, the timing of the deal has raised eyebrows.

Speed is a central argument for the group. “In AI, things are moving extremely fast,” Mensch said. “The problem we have is that in two years, it might already be too late.” He praised the Commission’s latest proposal on cloud and AI development as a step forward but called it too slow. Fouquet has separately warned that Europe is “quite behind” in AI, noting that the US buys 80% of the world’s most advanced chips.

The proximity of corporate leaders to policymaking has drawn criticism. Von der Leyen’s appointment of Siemens chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe as the EU’s special envoy for industrial AI sparked backlash from centre-left MEPs and watchdog groups. According to Corporate Europe Observatory, Snabe holds stock in US AI firm C3.ai and sits on the board of Temasek Holdings, which has investments in Amazon, Nvidia, and Alibaba. The Commission has stated it does not see his Siemens role as a conflict of interest, and the position is unpaid. Fouquet defended the appointment, saying the president “asked someone from the industry to come and help, and that someone decided to go and help.” He added: “And the only way we reward that decision is by accusing that person of conflict of interest.”

The European Tech Creators model, a standing CEO group with regular access to the Commission president, mirrors the government-industry relationships the group says it admires in Washington and Beijing. Airbus CEO Faury framed it plainly: “If it is a lobbying exercise, it’s a lobbying exercise for successful Europe.” Whether Europe’s current deregulation push fosters genuine competitiveness or simply eases oversight of its largest incumbents will hinge on which policies the group helps shape and which ones it helps kill. The Commission has also published draft revised merger guidelines, the most significant overhaul in two decades, which could further enable European firms to consolidate.