The BDI position paper on the Digital Omnibus on AI outlines how targeted adjustments to the EU AI Act can reduce regulatory complexity while safeguarding innovation and competitiveness. German industry calls for a proportionate, sequenced approach that ensures legal certainty, predictable timelines and workable obligations for AI providers and deployers. Key recommendations include extending high risk AI timelines, streamlining conformity assessment, clarifying R&D exemptions and aligning the AI Act with existing sectoral legislation and the GDPR. The paper highlights why industrial AI must be treated as the main objective for Europe’s digital future.

Only at rank 12 out of 35 industrialized and emerging economies. The Innovation Indicator 2025 by BDI, Roland Berger, Fraunhofer ISI and ZEW shows that Germany’s innovative capacity is stagnating — despite rising private and public innovation expenditures. Other countries are developing more dynamically, with far-reaching implications for Germany’s competitiveness as a business location. How does Germany perform in terms of innovative capacity in the key future areas of key enabling technologies and sustainability? And how do a country’s openness and the efficiency of research and commercialization contribute to its innovative strength? The Innovation Indicator 2025 has the answers.