Roland Busch

Siemens and SAP’s CEOs are demanding the EU overhaul its AI and data regulations, arguing current rules handicap European tech firms against U.S. and Chinese competitors. The pushback signals growing friction between Europe’s regulatory ambitions and its industrial base’s ability to innovate at global scale.

• Roland Busch and Christian Klein say EU AI Act and Data Act rules are too restrictive and impose overlapping burdens on European companies.
• Busch called the Data Act’s data-usage rules “toxic” to modern digital business models, rejecting delay proposals as insufficiently ambitious.
• Klein argues Europe’s real constraint is not computing power but inability to access and use existing data due to regulatory barriers.

• 2023 Year EU AI Act was adopted into law, establishing four-tier risk classification system
• 2 German tech giants jointly demanding EU regulatory overhaul in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interview
• 4 Risk levels under AI Act: unacceptable, high, substantial, and low-risk systems

Siemens CEO Roland Busch and SAP co-CEO Christian Klein have publicly called on the European Union to fundamentally rethink its approach to artificial intelligence and data regulation, warning that current rules threaten the continent’s ability to compete globally. In a joint interview first reported by Cryptopolitan, the two executives argued that Europe’s AI Act and Data Act impose excessive, overlapping constraints that stifle innovation without meaningfully advancing safety or transparency. Both leaders specifically targeted the Data Act’s restrictions on how firms can repurpose and share data, which Busch described as fundamentally incompatible with building competitive digital platforms.

Busch rejects half-measures, calls Data Act ‘toxic’ to digital business

Busch’s critique goes further than the delay requests from other tech giants. Unlike Alphabet and Meta, which have pushed the EU to postpone the AI Act’s implementation, Busch dismissed those efforts as insufficiently radical.

He said the letters lacked substantive reform proposals and failed to address what he views as the core problem: regulatory frameworks drafted too early in the innovation cycle, before their economic impact can be properly measured.

The Siemens CEO’s specific objection centers on the Data Act, which sets strict rules on how companies can use consumer and corporate data. Busch characterized these boundaries as “toxic” to modern business models that depend on data reuse, combination, and repurposing across applications.

He emphasized that overlapping rules across multiple EU directives create confusion and administrative burden, forcing European firms to navigate contradictory compliance requirements that their American and Chinese competitors largely avoid.

Klein points to data access, not computing, as Europe’s competitive bottleneck

Christian Klein added a complementary argument: Europe’s competitive disadvantage is not a shortage of computing infrastructure or hardware capacity, but an inability to unlock the value of data already held across the continent.

“We are sitting on a treasure trove of data in Europe, but we are not yet able to tap into it,” Busch told the publication, echoing Klein’s position that regulatory barriers, not infrastructure gaps, are the binding constraint.

Klein argued that European policymakers have misdirected investment and attention toward building new data centers when the actual competitive edge would come from reforming data governance and enabling firms to access and repurpose existing datasets. Without changes to how data can be used, he suggested, Europe will fall further behind regions moving aggressively to scale AI applications.

Both CEOs proposed that the EU should focus on opening data access while maintaining privacy protections, a balance they argued the current rulebook fails to strike.

Prior warnings on competitiveness fell short; now public pressure escalates

Siemens and SAP had previously raised these concerns through private channels, filing a joint letter to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager warning that the Data Act would compel the sharing of proprietary business data and undermine European competitiveness.

The shift to public advocacy in a major German newspaper signals frustration with the pace and scope of any regulatory revision. The two companies are among Europe’s largest industrial and software firms by revenue, and their joint statement carries substantial weight in EU policymaking circles.

The move also reflects broader anxiety within the German and European business establishment: the AI Act’s four-tier risk classification system and the Data Act’s data-sharing mandates are now in force, and companies face rising compliance costs without clarity on whether modified rules will grandfather in existing arrangements.

The CCS read. We see Busch and Klein’s public campaign as a signal that European industrial leadership has concluded regulatory negotiation has stalled and that pressure must shift to optics and political cost. For institutional investors in European tech and blockchain infrastructure, this matters because any Data Act revision could unlock dormant dataset value, a particular advantage for platforms built to aggregate and certify data on distributed networks, including those leveraging blockchain for supply-chain transparency.

The EU’s regulatory timeline now faces pressure from two vectors: industry lobbying for substantive revision and the ongoing example of faster-moving jurisdictions like the U.S. accelerating their own AI frameworks. Watch for the European Commission’s formal response to Busch and Klein’s demands within the next two quarters, and whether the Data Act faces amendment proposals in the European Parliament by year-end.