Nine countries across central and eastern Europe have signed a joint declaration on artificial intelligence, an unusual display of unity for a region that typically looks westward for technology partnerships.
The Prague Declaration on AI, inked at the CEE AI Summit in early September, commits signatories to collaborate on infrastructure, talent development, regulatory alignment, and gigafactory cooperation. Representatives from governments across the region attended the signing.
The pact reflects a strategic calculation rather than mere goodwill. Lukáš Kačena, the Czech government’s AI commissioner, framed the logic bluntly: “Separately we are compact, and together we are not.” He noted that individual CEE nations cannot achieve “frontier compute” alone, making cooperation “arithmetic” rather than preference.
Three factors drive this regional pivot: scale, timing, and opportunity. The countries share industrial economies, strong technical talent, limited public funding, and late starts on computing infrastructure. A solution built in Prague, Kačena explained, transfers to Bratislava or Bucharest with minimal adaptation.
The CEE Digital Coalition published an AI roadmap the week after the conference, identifying talent and industrial capacity as strengths while flagging scale as the primary obstacle. The report calls for a common CEE AI fund, expanded capital for scaling companies, SME adoption support, and regulatory coherence.
The declaration itself remains non-binding, with no dedicated budget. It covers five areas: know-how and talent sharing, infrastructure coordination, EU policy alignment, regulation, and continued cooperation. Cross-border regulatory sandboxes and joint pilots feature among the proposals.
Antonija Mršić Radas, executive director of CroAI, emphasized the leverage angle. “The idea is to recognise that CEE has built so much progress and has had a lot of success already, so we should be a bit braver and a bit more proactive, to be able to shape the discourse,” she said.
Meanwhile, the gigafactory question looms large. The EU has launched calls for four medium-sized and three large AI gigafactories, backed by €5 billion in EU funds, €5 billion from national governments, and an expected €20 billion in private investment. Poland and Czechia signed a bilateral agreement on gigafactory cooperation the same day as the declaration. A four-country consortium including Hungary and Lithuania reportedly plans a joint bid, while Romania pursues its own.
The deadline for gigafactory submissions is November 12.
Kačena remains pragmatic about the declaration’s significance. “Declarations do not lead, deliveries do,” he said. “Judge this one in 12 months.”
