Austria Pushes EU to Bring Anthropic to Europe as US Tightens AI Model Access

The US-China AI rivalry has a new front: Europe. Austria wants the European Union to recruit Anthropic and give it a base inside the bloc — a direct response to Washington restricting non-Americans from using the company’s most advanced models.

IT-NEWS, June 28 — Austria’s digital secretary, Alexander Pröll, sent a letter to Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president, arguing that member states should treat Anthropic as a strategic priority for the EU and explore how to bring the company’s operations into the region.

The letter focuses on what Europe would need to offer: legal certainty, market access, capital, and alignment on values. Pröll did not spell out how Anthropic’s European operations would actually work, but the message is clear — the EU should compete for top-tier AI companies, not just regulate them.

A company of Anthropic’s scale, Pröll argued, would pull in talent, anchor capital inside Europe, and help set industry standards. The pitch is pragmatic rather than protectionist — he framed it as a net positive for the bloc’s tech ecosystem, not a squeeze on European AI startups.

The push comes weeks after the European Commission’s own spokesperson, Thomas Regnier, acknowledged that Europe needs to strengthen its technological sovereignty, following Anthropic’s decision to cut off access to its frontier models for users outside the US. The move by Washington to restrict advanced AI exports and services has rattled European capitals that see themselves as caught in the crossfire of US-China tech decoupling.

For Anthropic, a European base could offer something the US increasingly cannot: a stable regulatory home with access to global markets and a deep pool of engineering talent. Whether the company is willing to make that bet is still an open question.