Brussels Economic Forum on 7 May: Aghion, Frieden and Dombrovskis Frame the EU’s Strategic AI Playbook for the Global Race

The European Commission’s flagship annual economic event, the Brussels Economic Forum, returns today, 7 May 2026, for its 26th edition under the theme “The EU’s AI Economy in the Global Race”. The forum brings together European and international policymakers, business leaders, academics and civil society representatives to chart a course for Europe’s digital and economic future, against a backdrop of the failed Digital Omnibus trilogue, the looming 2 August AI Act compliance deadline, and an intensifying geoeconomic contest with the United States and China for AI leadership.

Aghion delivers the Padoa-Schioppa address

The keynote of the morning programme is the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa address, delivered this year by Philippe Aghion, Professor at the Collège de France, INSEAD and the London School of Economics, and 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Aghion, whose work on innovation-driven growth and creative destruction has shaped a generation of EU economic thinking, is expected to argue that the AI revolution requires a fundamental rebalancing of European competition policy, public investment and regulatory frameworks. The forum’s organisers have framed his address as setting the intellectual frame for the day’s debates.

Luc Frieden opens the floor

The opening political address is delivered by Luc Frieden, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, whose country has reinvented itself in the past decade as a hub for digital sovereignty infrastructure within the EU. Luxembourg hosts the European Investment Bank, several large data centres and the EU’s emerging quantum computing facility. Frieden’s address is expected to emphasise the practical interface between national economic strategies and the EU’s pan-European AI investment plans, including the AI Continent Action Plan whose milestones were announced on 9 April 2026.

Two flagship panels

The morning panel — “Economic impact of AI: how to make an AI Economy work in Europe” — brings together Valdis Dombrovskis, Commissioner for Economy and Productivity, Implementation and Simplification; Louise Burke, CEO of the Open Data Institute; Stefan Hartung, Chairman of the Board of Management at Robert Bosch GmbH; Martin Sandbu, European Economic Commentator at the Financial Times; and Isabelle Schömann, Deputy General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. The panel addresses productivity, employment effects and labour market integration of AI. The afternoon panel — “Geoeconomics of AI: Europe’s place in the Global Race” — places EU positioning against the US and Chinese AI strategies in sharper relief.

The Oxford-style debate

One of the forum’s signature formats is the Oxford-style debate. The motion this year is striking in its candour: “This forum believes that regulating AI is necessary to ensure that the benefits are distributed fairly”. Speakers include Noreena Hertz, Honorary Professor at UCL Policy Lab; Mārtiņš Kazāks, Governor of the Bank of Latvia; and Eva Maydell, Member of the European Parliament. The debate frame allows participants to articulate positions more sharply than in the consensus-driven panel format — and offers a politically valuable testing ground for arguments that may surface later in the AI Act review and the post-Omnibus legislative track.

The Visions for Europe segment

The forum has progressively moved towards more dynamic formats, and the “Visions for Europe” segment features three TED-talk style presentations from visionary speakers articulating views on the economic potential and impact of AI. Side sessions dedicated to in-person participants include “The economic impact of the Recovery and Resilience Facility: New sectoral insights based on AI classification”, a fireside chat on “Work in the age of algorithmic management and AI”, and a session asking whether AI is “Miracle or Myth? Macroeconomic productivity gains from Artificial Intelligence”.

The strategic backdrop

Beyond the speeches and panels, the forum sits at an unusually consequential moment. The Digital Omnibus trilogue collapsed on 28 April, restoring the original AI Act timeline; the European Commission has the formal task of presenting a legislative proposal in Q4 2026 to simplify the energy union and climate action governance regulation; and the EU has just set 2 August 2026 as the binding compliance deadline for high-risk AI systems. Public discussion of how the EU should compete with American AI giants and Chinese state-backed champions has intensified, with calls for an EU “sovereign AI fund” and a coordinated industrial strategy for compute infrastructure. The 7 May forum provides the most prominent annual venue where these debates are formalised into actionable policy direction.

What success looks like

The forum’s success will be measured by three deliverables. First, whether the Aghion address articulates a clear and adoptable framework for AI-driven productivity that the Commission can take forward in its 2027 simplification package. Second, whether the Geoeconomics panel produces a defensible EU positioning that the Council can use in the autumn EU-US trade discussions. Third, whether the implicit consensus on a Sovereign AI Fund crystallises into a politically feasible budgetary proposal that the next Multiannual Financial Framework, currently under negotiation for 2028-2034, can absorb. By any measure, the bar for the Brussels Economic Forum 2026 is high — but the political demand for credible answers has rarely been more urgent.