Siemens

In June 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appointed Siemens supervisory board chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe as an unpaid special envoy on industrial AI, tasked with reporting on AI infrastructure and frontier AI adoption through March 2027. The appointment came weeks after Siemens successfully lobbied -- as part of the 'European Tech Creators' coalition alongside SAP, ASML, Mistral, Airbus, Ericsson, Nokia, and BMW -- to exempt products covered by the EU's machinery rules from the AI Act, an exemption incorporated into law via the 2026 omnibus simplification procedure. Four NGOs (Transparency International, Corporate Europe Observatory, LobbyControl, and The Good Lobby) filed a complaint arguing Snabe's continuing Siemens role compromises the envoy position's independence; after the Commission did not respond, they escalated to the EU Ombudsman, who opened a formal inquiry and ordered the Commission to respond by September 29, 2026. Forty members of the European Parliament (Greens, S&D, Renew, and The Left, but no members of von der Leyen's own EPP) separately demanded disclosure of the appointment's conflict-of-interest assessment.

At Hannover Messe on April 19, 2026, Siemens CEO Roland Busch said the company could not justify roughly EUR1 billion (about EUR500 million of it) in planned industrial AI investment staying in the EU given the bloc's AI Act and Data Act, which he argued regulate industrial AI the same way as consumer applications and add unnecessary oversight on top of already-regulated sectors. 'I cannot explain to my shareholders why I should invest in an environment where I am being held back,' Busch said. The statement followed an earlier March 25, 2026 warning to the Financial Times that EU 'AI sovereignty' efforts could be a 'disaster' for innovation speed. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz later publicly backed Siemens's position, saying the government would push to free 'industrial AI from the current, overly restrictive straitjacket' of EU rules.