At the Digitalgipfel in Berlin this week, the German government's message was momentum. The setting was an old iron foundry, the Wilhelm-Hallen; the motto was "Shaping AI: safe, sovereign, competitive"; and Chancellor Friedrich Merz used his Monday afternoon speech to promise a dual strategy — fund industrially usable models now, research the next generation (including "physical AI") in parallel, and reduce dependencies "without falling into autarky."
The numbers on the table are less reassuring than the setting.
According to a report by a task force the government itself appointed, the next 18 months will decide whether Europe stays in the global AI race at all, and on current projections the window closes in 2028. Germany, the report says, could lose the connection despite a strong starting position in research. The government presented 18 measures aimed at making the country an "AI nation" by 2030 — a goal that dates back to 2018, when Angela Merkel's coalition first adopted the phrase.
The demand side, at least, is not the problem. A Bitkom survey released for the summit found that close to 90 percent of German companies say a vendor's country of origin matters when they choose an AI system. Germany and France rank at the top of their preferences; only 41 percent would prefer AI from the United States, and 12 percent from China. "Digital sovereignty is not decided by where we buy AI," said Bitkom president Ralf Wintergerst, "but by whether we are ourselves in a position to develop key technologies and position them successfully on international markets." The bottleneck, he said, is supply.
Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger put the trade-off more bluntly: the risk of missing the AI race weighs heavier than the risks of the technology itself. "I take the risks of AI seriously," he said. "But I am certain: if we are not ambitious enough, move too slowly and make no decisions, we will face even greater risks, become even more dependent and miss growth opportunities. We underestimate what is coming."
Critics point out that the government's own budget moves in the other direction. The Centre for Digital Rights and Democracy noted that spending on the Sovereign Tech Agency, which funds maintenance of open-source infrastructure, was cut by 370,000 euros to around 27.4 million euros in next year's federal budget. "Digital sovereignty in Germany works like quitting smoking," said Markus Beckedahl. "You want to. Just not today." The state, he added, continues to pay millions for Microsoft services.
Merz, a year ago at the same summit, supplied the line his critics now quote back: "Digital sovereignty has costs. But digital dependence has higher costs." This year he leaned on a different register — human dignity, the pace of institutions, and a citation of Pope Leo XIV — and told the hall that "the tempo of our institutions is also the tempo of human life."
The gap between that tempo and an 18-month window is now the central question of German digital policy. The task force's first report is meant to become the basis for the "AI nation 2030" blueprint. Whether the 18 measures behind it are funded is a budget question, and the budget, so far, has moved the other way.
