Austria proposes bringing Anthropic into EU to counter U.S. AI limits

Anthropic has received a proposal from Austria urging the European Union to explore establishing the AI company within the bloc after U.S. restrictions limited foreign access to its most advanced models.

According to a letter released by the Austrian government, State Secretary for Digitalization Alexander Proell urged EU Technology Commissioner Henna Virkkunen to consider strategic participation in Anthropic, arguing that Europe should not risk losing access to major AI advances because of decisions made outside the region.

Proell wrote that the EU could offer the company legal certainty, market access, investment, and a values based environment. While acknowledging that such a move would face scepticism and practical challenges, he argued that Europe should decide whether it wants to shape its own technological future or continue relying on decisions taken elsewhere.

The proposal comes weeks after Anthropic suspended access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models following a U.S. government export control directive. As previously reported by crypto.news, the company said authorities instructed it to block the models for all foreign nationals, including foreign employees working inside the United States, over concerns that the systems could be used to identify or repair software vulnerabilities through a potential jailbreak technique.

Europe responds as AI access becomes more restricted

Earlier this month, the European Commission proposed legislation to strengthen domestic cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and semiconductor industries while reducing reliance on U.S. technology companies despite criticism from the U.S. government over the bloc’s regulatory approach.

Austria’s proposal also follows recent concerns over Anthropic’s licensing restrictions outside the United States. The Financial Times reported on June 18 that JPMorgan removed Anthropic’s Claude models from its approved AI tools for employees in Hong Kong because of the company’s licensing terms. 

The publication said Goldman Sachs had previously introduced similar restrictions after determining that Anthropic’s terms of service excluded usage across Greater China, including Hong Kong.

Company faces legal and policy pressure

Alongside the international access debate, Anthropic continues to face legal scrutiny in the United States. Earlier this month, Washington, D.C. resident Karl Kahn filed a proposed class action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company’s $100 per month Max 5x and $200 per month Max 20x Claude subscriptions delivered substantially less usage than their marketing suggested.

The complaint argues that subscribers encountered usage limits well below the advertised five-times and 20 times access levels, making it difficult to predict when they would reach their caps during regular work sessions.

Those developments have unfolded shortly after Anthropic published its “Policy on the AI Exponential” proposal on June 11, calling for governments to introduce testing requirements, independent evaluations, cybersecurity standards, and enforcement measures for frontier AI systems because of potential biological, cybersecurity, and operational risks associated with increasingly capable models.