For years, Europe’s approach to AI regulation has been characterised by its critics — primarily in the United States — as risk-averse, innovation-hostile and out of step with the pace of technological change. At the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Emmanuel Macron mounted a sustained and largely successful challenge to this characterisation, making the case that Europe’s approach is not backward but prescient, not cautious but responsible. The global response suggested he was gaining ground.
Macron’s evidence base was the most compelling available. Research by Unicef and Interpol had documented 1.2 million child victims of AI deepfakes in a single year — the consequence, Macron argued, of precisely the kind of regulatory environment that the EU’s AI Act is designed to prevent. His logic was simple: the harm documented by the research is the harm that results from the absence of European-style governance. If that harm is not acceptable, then governance like Europe’s is the remedy.
His defence of the EU’s AI Act against the Trump administration’s critique was both specific and confident. The White House AI adviser had described the Act as hostile to innovation. Macron described the critics as “misinformed friends” and pointed to Europe’s continued investment and innovation record as evidence that the regulatory burden has not been crippling. He did not concede the premise; he challenged it, and challenged it with evidence.
The international response was notably supportive. António Guterres backed Macron’s broader direction on global AI governance. Narendra Modi aligned on child safety and open-source technology. Sam Altman’s call for international oversight — while not an endorsement of the EU’s specific approach — signalled that the case for governance is gaining acceptance even within the tech industry. The room in Delhi was more sympathetic to Macron’s position than a similar room might have been two years ago.
The reckoning Macron invited in Delhi is not complete. The American opposition to European-style regulation remains politically powerful, and the gap between European governance standards and those of other major AI players is wide. But Delhi represented a moment when Europe’s approach gained global respect — when the evidence for its necessity became harder to ignore and the coalition supporting its broader direction became harder to dismiss. That is progress, and Macron made it happen.
