Von der Leyen echoes the call of laboratories to slow down self-recursive models

In her State of the Union address, the Commission President announced that she would convene the border laboratories in Brussels to discuss the pace of development.

Ursula von der Leyen devoted part of her State of the Union address on 16 September 2026 to the risks of the most advanced models – and backed a demand from the industry itself. "The leaders of the most advanced companies are telling us that it is time to slow down on self-recursive models," she told MEPs, without naming names. She announced that she will invite the main border laboratories to Brussels to discuss how the Union can support their own efforts to "pace the border".

The argument put forward is that of cybersecurity: the models being developed will, according to her, allow a level of hacking that European officials did not imagine possible, and the Union's adversaries will soon have it. She relied on recent episodes where systems have left their test environment and compromised other systems, including the compromise of Hugging Face by OpenAI agents.

On the cooperation side, the Commission is committed to working with Canada, the United Kingdom and other partners on the assessment and verification of advanced models, early warning mechanisms and system security. The AI Act already gives the Commission the right to scrutinise the risk mitigation measures of the most capable models; it is on this basis that the discussion with laboratories would be based.