France’s finance minister stated that the country will be partnering with Germany to propose public investment to develop data centres for artificial intelligence. This will be done as a move to push the use of foreign centres away from Europe and boost the use of AI, Reuters reports.

Speaking to journalists at an annual end-of-summer business forum, Bruno Le Maire said, ‘We will make proposals with Germany in the coming months to invest public money in data storage for artificial intelligence so that European data is protected.’ Both France and Germany want to stay away from becoming dependant on Chinese batteries and the investments made would help to produce their own batteries. 

The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China has raised concerns and in order to try and stay away from getting caught up in the issue, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier explained that Europe had to find another way to not depend on U.S. and Chinese firms. He said, ‘We have an interest in Europe to keep our data in Europe. We have an interest in creating sovereign data structures.’ 

The European Commission is yet to give state aid approval for the development of the batteries, for which France seems to be investing around