Europe has built the world’s most advanced framework for data protection and digital rights. But as businesses scale AI, cloud services, and data driven operations, a key question emerges: is this regulatory architecture a burden, or a foundation for long term competitive advantage?

For companies across the Single Market, compliance with GDPR and related rules requires significant investment. Yet it also creates something harder to replicate trust. Customers, employees, and partners increasingly expect strong safeguards around data use. The real challenge is making this framework work more efficiently, reducing friction while preserving the protections that sustain public confidence.

For companies across the Single Market, compliance with GDPR and related rules requires significant investment. Yet it also creates something harder to replicate, trust. Customers, employees, and partners increasingly expect strong safeguards around data use. The real challenge is making this framework work more efficiently, reducing friction while preserving the protections that sustain public confidence. Relationships, and what it will take for Europe’s rights-based approach to become a genuine source of competitive differentiation.

The European market for Generative AI is evolving at remarkable speed, raising important questions about competition, innovation and strategic dependencies across the digital economy. Taking place just weeks after the European Commission’s 3 May review report on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), this session will assess how the current AI landscape is developing in practice, from model deployment and infrastructure choices to multi-sourcing strategies and the growing role of open-source ecosystems.

As AI markets become increasingly interconnected with cloud services, compute capacity and platform ecosystems, the discussion will examine whether Europe’s existing competition framework is adequately equipped to reflect these new dynamics. In this context, the session will explore how open and diversified AI ecosystems can support contestability, resilience and innovation, and what this means for the future of digital competition in Europe.

In the face of a rapidly evolving global landscape, Europe's digital competitiveness in the coming decade will increasingly depend on strengthening its economic foundations, particularly through secure, interoperable payment systems. As digital infrastructure becomes increasingly strategic, Europe must modernize its financial architecture to ensure resilience and autonomy in a fragmented global environment.

This session will focus on the role of payment systems as strategic infrastructure in shaping Europe's capacity to reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen the Single Market. It will delve into the modernisation efforts underway, particularly regarding the digital euro, and address the balance between stability, privacy, and trust in financial systems.

This Business Leaders' Luncheon will bring together senior policymakers and industry leaders for an in-depth discussion on simplifying EU digital legislation to enhance its practical application across sectors like cloud, AI, and digital infrastructure. The focus will be on the real-world challenges businesses face due to complex, overlapping requirements, reporting obligations, and inconsistent implementation across Member States.

The luncheon with Valdis Dombrovskis, Commissioner for Economy and Productivity; Implementation and Simplification, will address key issues such as the bottlenecks in the application of EU rules, their impact on investment and business operations, and how simplification can support innovation and growth in the digital economy.

The Commission’s first review report under Article 53 DMA will provide the first formal assessment of whether the regime is delivering fairer and more contestable digital markets in practice. Far from a routine exercise, the review will test whether the DMA’s current scope, obligations and enforcement tools remain fit for purpose, and whether interoperability requirements should be strengthened for the next phase.

Early implementation has already begun to reshape market behaviour, from greater browser and app choice to new portability options and alternative app marketplace models. Yet major questions remain unresolved: self-preferencing, limited interoperability in practice, app store conditions, consent and choice architecture, and the speed, transparency and deterrent force of enforcement.

At the same time, the review comes as digital markets evolve rapidly. AI services, cloud dependencies and new forms of ecosystem lock-in are already challenging the DMA’s future-proofing capacity. This session will examine what the review means for the next enforcement cycle, where clearer guidance or stronger remedies may be needed, and how Europe can ensure that open digital markets work not only in law, but in practice.

Europe’s clean energy transition is moving from targets to system stress tests. Electrification is accelerating, renewable generation is scaling, and grids are increasingly constrained. At the same time, digital infrastructure such as AI platforms, sensors and data centres is becoming a structural component of how the energy system is planned, operated and secured.

This session looks at how AI and real time data can improve forecasting, congestion management and flexibility, strengthen grid resilience while speeding up the integration of renewables. It will also examine the role of data centres as both major loads and potential flexibility providers, and what it takes to align investment, permitting and regulation to reward innovation at scale. Electrification will shape Europe’s pathway, but digital capability will determine whether it delivers securely and competitively.

Cyber and hybrid attacks on essential services are pushing the EU to treat ICT supply chains and foreign technology dependencies as strategic risks. In January 2026, the Commission proposed a revision of the Cybersecurity Act to reinforce supply chain security and make EU cybersecurity certification more streamlined and usable, supported by an ICT Supply Chain Security Toolbox that defines shared risk scenarios and mitigation measures.

NIS2 is becoming the governance and supervisory backbone for critical and important entities across the Union. In parallel, the Cyber Resilience Act embeds security by design and vulnerability management into products with digital elements, with reporting obligations applying from September 2026 and full application in December 2027. This expert panel will focus on delivery challenges, from standards and notified body capacity to consistent enforcement, and workable compliance pathways for startups and open source.

Europe’s automotive sector is undergoing a profound transformation, shaped by digitalisation, decarbonisation and intensifying global competition. The challenge is no longer whether the industry must evolve, but how Europe can use digital innovation to build a more competitive, cleaner, and more resilient automotive ecosystem. As highlighted in the European Commission’s 2025 Action Plan for the automotive sector, future leadership will depend not only on manufacturing strength, but also on Europe’s ability to develop and deploy software defined vehicles, AI powered systems, advanced computing, secure connectivity and trusted data ecosystems across the mobility value chain.

In this context, connected and automated mobility should be understood not as a separate innovation track, but as part of a broader industrial transformation. Digital technologies can optimise vehicle performance, improve battery management, enable predictive maintenance, support safer and more efficient logistics, reduce congestion and emissions, and create new mobility business models. Delivering this at scale will require interoperable standards, cross border testing environments, access to in vehicle data, cyber resilient systems, strong digital infrastructure and sustained investment.

In this context, connected and automated mobility should be understood not as a separate innovation track, but as part of a broader industrial transformation. Digital technologies can optimise vehicle performance, improve battery management, enable predictive maintenance, support safer and more efficient logistics, reduce congestion and emissions, and create new mobility business models. Delivering this at scale will require interoperable standards, cross-border testing environments, access to in-vehicle data, cyber resilient systems, strong digital infrastructure and sustained investment.

This session will examine how digital innovation can support a cleaner industrial model, strengthen competitiveness and accelerate the modernisation of Europe’s wider mobility and manufacturing ecosystem.