EU countries to discuss AI rules as Trump calls safety warnings a ‘hoax’

Government officials from across the European Union will gather in Brussels on Thursday to discuss how to set global rules to counter the threat from new AI models, according to two EU diplomats and a draft agenda seen by POLITICO.

The European Commission will give “updates on EU and international AI policy” and give a “technical briefing on recent AI incidents” during a gathering of the Artificial Intelligence Board, which comprises of representatives from every EU member country and regularly convenes to monitor progress on the bloc’s Artificial Intelligence Act.

This week’s gathering follows a series of calls to slow down AI development by top company leaders such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. U.S. President Trump immediately rebuffed the calls, calling the AI safety warnings a “hoax” and arguing that slowing down would give China the momentum in AI.

The European discussions on global cooperation will focus on work done at the G7, the G20 and the United Nations, one of the diplomats said.

Last Friday, the European Commission’s top tech official, Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, called for global AI rules and cooperation.

Virkkunen also pointed out that the EU has a law in place, requiring companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to assess and mitigate the risk of losing control of an AI model, but that is “not the case globally.”

The European Parliament’s lead lawmaker on AI, Italian Social Democrat Brando Benifei, pressured the European Commission on Tuesday to push for global AI cooperation, including in President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the EU address to lawmakers on Wednesday. “We need international cooperation, we need the U.S., we need China,” he said in an interview with Euronews.