As VivaTech and the G7 summit converge in France, European AI sovereignty has become the defining anxiety. The US decision to restrict Anthropic's top models for foreign nationals — which ended up cutting off all global users — made Europe's dependency on American AI infrastructure viscerally real. Mistral is frequently cited as Europe's answer, but critics question whether one company can anchor a continental strategy. The EU has planned AI gigafactories and sovereign-cloud contracts, but the build-out takes years. Meanwhile, G7 representatives privately lobbied US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for a 'trusted partners' arrangement — revealing a gap between Europe's public rhetoric of independence and its private desire for better access to American AI.
