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The EU legislative institutions adopted an amendment to the EuroHPC Regulation to support the states’ strategic autonomy in high-performance computing, AI and quantum technologies. The amendments broaden EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) mandate, enabling to support the deployment and operation of next-generation computing infrastructures, including AI gigafactories and quantum technologies; the amendment enters into force this January.
Background
High Performance Computing, HPC is a mainstream technology for the digital transformation of the European economy, enabling many traditional industrial sectors to innovate with higher value products and services.
In combination with other advanced digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and cloud technologies, the HPC is paving the way towards innovative socio-economic and industrial applications in critical areas for the EU member states, such as personalised medicine, weather forecast and climate change, smart and green development and transport, new materials for clean energy, drug design and virtual testing, sustainable agriculture, or engineering and manufacturing.
In order to progressively develop and deploy the computing technologies needed to maintain European-level of research and industrial capacities at a leading edge, the member states’ investment in High Performance Computing and quantum computing initiatives should be coordinated and the industrial and the HPCs market take-up and quantum computing technologies be reinforced both in the public and private sectors.
Strategic investment in Europe’s digital future
So-called “high performance computing” (HPC) is a strategic politico-economic resource for powering applications that provide technologies to design and perform efficient solutions involving numerous and complex present global challenges and crises management. The HPCs also can contribute to key EU-wide policies, such as the “green deal”, which includes e.g. models and tools for transforming increasing number of climate-environmental challenges into opportunities for social innovation and economic growth.
Note. As an example, the EU’s “Destination Earth Initiative” can be mentioned, which was announced in the Commission’s Communications (i.e. in December 2019 “The European Green Deal”, in February 2020 “European strategy for data”, and “Shaping Europe’s digital future”. More in: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en
The adoption of the amended EuroHPC JU regulation will support EU ambition aims to remain at the forefront of strategic digital technologies. By aligning high-performance computing, AI and quantum under a strengthened governance and investment framework the EU is laying the foundations for sustainable growth, technological leadership and resilience in an increasingly competitive global landscape. The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, together with the participating member states and associated partners, are now able to move forward with the implementation of the amended mandate, translating this regulatory milestone into concrete technologies, needed infrastructures and services that benefit European socio-political economy.
More in: https://www.eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/index_en
Europe’s leading role in the data economy, its scientific excellence, and its industrial strength increasingly depend on the EU’s ability to develop key HPCs technologies, to provide access to world-class supercomputing and data infrastructures, as well as maintaining existing leadership in the HPCs applications.
Hence, the EU should increase its effectiveness in turning the technology developments into demand-oriented and application-driven European HPCs and quantum computing systems of the highest quality, establishing an effective link between technology supply, co-design with users, and a joint procurement of world-class systems, while creating a world-class ecosystem in HPCs and quantum computing technologies and applications in the member states.
At the same time, the EU should provide an opportunity for its supply industry to leverage on such investments, leading to their uptake in large-scale and emerging application fields such as personalised medicine, climate change, connected and automated driving or other lead markets that are underpinned by artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, edge computing or more broadly by the digitalisation of the European industry.
The HPC-JU mission
The ultimate mission of the HPC-Joint Undertaking at the EU level, should be structured in one administrative pillar and six technical pillars addressing respectively the infrastructure activities, the EU-wide activities in the supercomputing services, the technology-related activities, the supercomputing applications related activities, as well as activities to widen the usage and skills, and the international cooperation activities.
For example, the Digital Europe Program, DEP should be used to fund the infrastructure pillar, part of the federation of supercomputing services pillar and the widening usage and skills pillar. The Connecting Europe Facility should be used to fund the remaining activities of the federation of supercomputing services pillar, i.e. the interconnection of the HPCs, quantum computing and data resources, as well as the interconnection with the EU-wide data spaces and secured cloud infrastructures. Horizon Europe should be used to fund the technology pillar, the application pillar and the international cooperation pillar.
More on DEP in: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0118
National High Performance Computing Competence Centres are legal entities and/or a consortium of legal entities, established in the EU member state, associated with a national supercomputing center of that state, providing users from industry, including SMEs, academia and public administrations with access on demand to the supercomputers and to the latest High Performance Computing technologies, tools, applications and services, and offering expertise, skills, training, networking and outreach.
The EU financial contribution to the Joint Undertaking including EEA appropriations shall be up to € 3 billion, including € 92 million for administrative costs, on the condition that that amount is at least matched by the contribution of the participating states, distributed as follows: a) up to € 900 million from Horizon Europe; b) up to €1,9 billion from the Digital Europe Program; and c) up to € 200 million from the Connecting Europe Facility.
Source: EuroHPC JU Regulation at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1173/oj/eng
Accelerating the deployment of AI gigafactories
In December 2025, the European Commission and the European Investment Bank Group (EIB Group) has joined forces to make Europe a leading AI continent. The agreement established a framework to accelerate the financing and development of the AI gigafactories that will anchor Europe’s future AI infrastructure.
The EIB Group will provide tailored advisory support to consortia in accordance with the Commission’s informal Call for Expression of Interest: this guidance will help turn ambitious concepts into “bankable projects” that can be submitted in the formal call for the establishment of AI Gigafactories planned for early 2026, paving the way for potential EIB co-financing.
The revised framework provides a legal and operational basis for the establishment of AI Gigafactories across the Union. These large-scale computing and data infrastructures are designed to support the training and deployment of state-of-the-art large AI models, including foundation and generative AI systems. The European AI gigafactories (AIGF) will offer researchers, startups, industry and member states public authorities’ adequate access to world-class compute resources, accelerating innovation while ensuring compliance with European values, data protection standards and AI governance frameworks; the official call for establishing the AIGFs is planned during the first quarter of 2026.
European InvestAI program mobilizes a €20 billion facility to support up to five AI gigafactories, as the large-scale computing facilities dedicated to the development and training of next-generation AI models. Beyond unlocking investment, the EU-wide financial partnership aims to translate European AI vision into concrete, large‑scale facilities that can power innovation, strengthen technological sovereignty, and position the EU as a global leader in Artificial Intelligence.
Source and citation from: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-and-european-investment-bank-group-team-support-ai-gigafactories
Boosting Europe’s quantum ambitions
The mentioned amendment also allows EHPC-JU to further develop Europe’s quantum technology capabilities. It enables coordinated investment between the Union institutions and participating states in the EHPC-JU, advancing Europe’s long-term objective of building a sovereign quantum ecosystem, from research and development to industrial applications.
As the HPC regulation notes, the use of the supercomputers of the Joint Undertaking should focus on civilian applications for public and private users residing, established or located in a EU member state or in a third country associated to the Digital Europe Program or to Horizon Europe, including applications in cybersecurity that may be of dual use. Users should be granted the Union’s share of access time according to access policy rules defined by the Governing Board; the use of these supercomputers should also respect international agreements concluded by the Union.
Since the objectives of the HPC regulation, namely the strengthening of research and innovation capabilities, the development of supercomputing capability building and widening activities, the federation, connectivity and international cooperation and the acquisition of world-class supercomputers, and access to High Performance Computing, quantum computing service and data infrastructure across the Union by means of a Joint Undertaking, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states, but can rather, by reason of avoiding unnecessary duplication, retaining critical mass and ensuring that public financing is used in an optimal way, be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity (art. 5, TEU).
In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Treaty, this regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve those objectives.
The EHPC supercomputers (or the EHPC supercomputer partitions for industrial use) shall be hosted in a hosting entity of a EuroHPC supercomputer.
The use of EHP supercomputers shall be open to users from the public and private sectors and shall focus on civilian applications. Except for the industrial-grade EHP supercomputers, their use shall be primarily for research and innovation purposes falling under public funding programs, for public sector applications and for private innovation activities of SMEs, where appropriate.
thanks for this