At a time when the United States and China are racing ahead in AI capabilities, The EU’s AI Experiment explores whether the European Union can still write the rules of the game. Professor Miguel Verdeguer argues that the answer will depend less on a single flagship regulation than on the Union’s ability to align many moving pieces: chips and cloud capacity, SME empowerment, public procurement, rightsbased governance, and credible global diplomacy.

The book moves from the negotiating rooms of the EU institutions to telecom networks, courtrooms, regulatory sandboxes, and global standard-setting forums, showing how each site contributes to a broader “AI social contract” for Europe. Combining technocratic rigour with a broader strategic vision, the book reads as a map for policymakers, law firms, companies, and citizens who refuse to choose between competitiveness, pluralism, and democracy.

It invites the reader to approach AI not only as a regulatory challenge, but as a domain in which the European Union cannot afford to fall behind in an ever more geopoliticised world. A domain that will ultimately contribute to shaping Europe’s constitutional project.