European Commission Builds Sovereign, Self-Hosted Generative AI Platform AI@EC with deepset
European CommissionHaystack Enterprise Platform · Haystack · AISSThe European Commission partnered with deepset to build AI@EC, a self-hosted sovereign AI platform based on the Haystack Enterprise Platform, co-developed with the Commission's Directorate-General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT). The platform runs entirely on Commission-managed infrastructure, keeping Sensitive Non-Classified data within EU-controlled systems and enforcing EUDPR and EU AI Act compliance through an AI Governance Board, automated guardrails, audit trails, EU Login authentication, and role-based access. It lets both technical and non-technical staff build and govern generative AI agents and applications - templates cover use cases like knowledge management, document summarization, chatbots, and multilingual policy analysis - with 68 active builders, 29 Directorate-Generals running AI pipelines, and 316 pipelines in production or ready for rollout. The Commission's original GPT@EC conversational assistant is being migrated onto the platform.
Overview
The European Commission partnered with deepset to build AI@EC, a self-hosted sovereign AI platform based on the Haystack Enterprise Platform, co-developed with the Commission's Directorate-General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT). The platform runs entirely on Commission-managed infrastructure, keeping Sensitive Non-Classified data within EU-controlled systems and enforcing EUDPR and EU AI Act compliance through an AI Governance Board, automated guardrails, audit trails, EU Login authentication, and role-based access. It lets both technical and non-technical staff build and govern generative AI agents and applications - templates cover use cases like knowledge management, document summarization, chatbots, and multilingual policy analysis - with 68 active builders, 29 Directorate-Generals running AI pipelines, and 316 pipelines in production or ready for rollout. The Commission's original GPT@EC conversational assistant is being migrated onto the platform.
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Inspect the highlighted sourceThe challenge
After the Commission's first generative AI project, GPT@EC, proved AI could add value, departments across the institution began building their own AI tools independently without a way to reuse components or govern what was being built; for an institution of 32,000 civil servants with strict data classification requirements and binding EU regulation, that fragmentation was unsustainable, and Sensitive Non-Classified data could not leave EU-controlled infrastructure or be exposed to non-EU jurisdictions.
The solution
The Commission partnered with deepset to co-develop AI@EC, a self-hosted, model-agnostic platform built on deepset's Haystack Enterprise Platform and developed jointly with DG DIGIT across four iterative phases; it gives departments a centralized, self-service environment to build, test, deploy and govern generative AI agents using templates for use cases like agents, knowledge management, document summarization, chatbots and multilingual policy analysis, with automated guardrails, audit trails, EU Login authentication and role-based permissions.
Reported business value
AI@EC has onboarded 68 active builders across 29 Directorate-Generals running AI pipelines, with 316 pipelines in production or ready for rollout, replacing fragmented, independently-built departmental AI tools with a centralized, governed platform.
Sources
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This record was researched and written with AI assistance, and its claims were checked against the sources above. (EU AI Act art. 50 transparency notice.)
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