It was a scene straight out of Deliverance. Last night, JD Vance’s alleged pillow fetish met its match: Europe. And the Commission president cast us all in the role of 'couch'.
The closing of the AI Action Summit yesterday could have been a good day for Europe.
France got a big bag of money. Von der Leyen launched the world’s largest public-private partnership. The world united for an "inclusive and sustainable AI," leaving the Americans and the Brits out in the cold.
JD Vance’s performance in Paris wasn’t even that bad.
He represented his bosses accurately by railing against EU regulation – not because of any real substance but on principle. This could have ended there, a forgettable footnote in the summit minutes.
But instead of enjoying a well-earned Feierabend, von der Leyen and team decided to screw things up.
First, full-blown panic. Suddenly, hand-wringing over the EU-US relationship being under threat sent the Commission president scrambling into a rushed meeting with Vance to reassure him that, yes, we still love each other.
And then, the Commission quietly dropped its work programme for the year at around 9pm, in which – surprise! – it withdrew a proposed EU rule on AI, the AI Liability Directive.
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