The European Commission entered talks to bring the European Union into Pax Silica, a U.S.-led initiative aimed at building a trusted network for semiconductors, AI infrastructure, critical minerals and data centers to reduce reliance on China, Bloomberg reported May 12. A senior EU official will travel to Washington in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Brussels is holding talks with France, the last holdout among major EU member states regarding the bloc's participation in the initiative.

Pax Silica was formed in December 2025 with the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Australia as the founding signatories. Other countries have since also joined the initiative, including EU members Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and Greece. However, the European Union was excluded at the institutional level, with Washington citing regulatory divergences over the bloc's AI Act and Digital Markets Act, though U.S. officials stopped short of demanding changes to the policies as a precondition for entry. A France-led group of member states then postponed the opening of accession talks in March 2026 over governance and U.S. terms, with concerns reportedly centering on the degree of operational control Washington would retain over membership criteria, supply-chain screening decisions and the conditions under which signatories could be required to align export controls with U.S. policy.