The Foreign Affairs Aspects of the Artificial Intelligence Policy of the European Union

The EU has a problem: it is lagging behind in technological developments on Artificial Intelligence (AI). To solve it, the EU does what it does best: it regulates. Is this going to be enough? To attempt an answer, this article examines the foreign affairs ramification of the EU’s AI policy, particularly through the lens of the foreign policy implications of the AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689). We cluster these foreign policy implications around three themes: areas in which the EU leads, dossiers on which it cooperates with partners, and issues on which it seeks to export its values. By drawing on literature on issue salience, we argue that this legislative initiative aligns with the EU’s broader strategy to harness its economic and regulatory power to support foreign policy goals. The contribution of this article is that it offers a policy commentary on the connection between internal and external EU policies, and on how the EU leverages its market power on the international arena at a time of increased geopolitical competition. The answer to the opening question is that EU institutions hope that regulation is enough to eventually make the EU competitive in this domain, but reality is not proving them right.