From Shared Priorities to Concrete Proposals
Held in Berlin in January 2025, the inaugural dialogue, involving Inria and Fraunhofer, brought together over 40 French and German stakeholders to align on strategic priorities — from trustworthy infrastructure and regulation to talent, energy, and investment. This joint momentum, opened to both ecosystems in a coalition of the willing, reflects a shared ambition to create the conditions for a more competitive and sovereign AI ecosystem by defining coordinated roadmaps across major industrial domains.
Since then, multi-stakeholder vertical workshops have been conducted across key sectors like energy, healthcare, manufacturing, robotics, agritech, media and telecommunications. Over 100 industry representatives discussed with AI suppliers and academia on key AI use cases in their domain. They developed joint project ideas for sovereign AI applications and identified major obstacles for implementation addressing politics, e.g. regulation.
“The EU needs a clear, actionable, agile, and efficient process for the regulatory validation of AI-based medical devices.” Sébastien Fricker, Vision and Perception Modeling team manager at Essilor Luxottica.
"Europe needs a strong, sovereign, and independent media ecosystem—especially in times when artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of digital competition. When international platforms use our journalistic content for their AI models without consent or compensation, it's not just about economic interests, but about the foundation of democratic public discourse."Carsten Schwecke, Chief Commercial Officer and responsible for all commercial, technological, and data- and AI-based activities at RTL Germany
The outcomes of these workshops have been consolidated outlining concrete proposals, success indicators plus potential investment pathways for strategic AI applications and R&D funding opportunities. These results are showcased this week at the Adopt AI Summit in Paris, where the initiative is featured through a joint booth hosted by Fraunhofer, Inria, and IMT (“French-German Tech Lab” Booth E2) — the latter being an active partner of the dialogue since July 2025.
A Roadmap Initiative Underway
These contributions inform the next stage: a joint roadmap, led by a “coalition of the willing”, to be formalised in the coming months. This initiative has gathered wide backing from major stakeholders. A second plenary dialogue is now scheduled for next year in Paris on March 9th 2026 — with the aim to assess progress, to elaborate on existing project ideas resp. consortia and mobilize new commitments by widening and deepening the ecosystem.
Longstanding Franco-German Commitment
Inria, the French national institute for research in digital science and technology, brings its expertise in world-class research, innovation and startup creation. Inria also acts as the Digital Programs Agency on behalf of the French government.
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Germany’s leading organization for applied research, plays a key role in transferring cutting-edge technologies to industry, combining public research with strong industrial partnerships to support economic and societal impact.
As a founding member of the German-French Academy for the Industry of the Future, IMT supports this dialogue as part of its commitment to fostering European technological sovereignty through joint research, innovation, and education.
As Europe strives to reconcile competitiveness with sovereignty in the age of AI, Franco-German leadership stands as a cornerstone for shaping the future.
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft