European Commission

On June 3, 2026, the European Commission appointed Jim Hagemann Snabe — chairman of Siemens and former SAP CEO — as Special Envoy for Industrial Artificial Intelligence, with a mandate covering AI infrastructure, data centres, HPC, and semiconductor supply chains. The appointment came weeks after Siemens, part of a new Brussels lobbying coalition called European Tech Creators (with SAP, ASML, Mistral, Airbus, Ericsson, and Nokia), had fiercely lobbied to weaken provisions of the EU AI Act. Snabe retained his Siemens chairmanship while taking the advisory role (though he suspended board seats at Google Cloud and C3 AI), and the Commission refused to detail what conflict-of-interest safeguards, if any, applied to the appointment. MEPs including Parliament's lead AI negotiator Brando Benifei publicly criticized the move, and lawmakers pressed the Commission for clarification.