Europe may be slower to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) than the United States because of the way its businesses are structured, according to a new study.
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The Brookings Institution report surveyed more than 5,000 people in the United States and six European countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom) in June 2025 and February 2026 to find out how regularly they use AI at work.
The study measures both enterprise-level integration and individual use of AI in the workplace.
We then compared that data to a survey of U.S. businesses and a European survey of corporate ICT use and e-commerce to explore how people are using AI in the workplace.
US companies are more likely to incorporate AI into daily operations, with an estimated 34% using AI for any purpose, compared to an EU-wide average of 20% At the individual level, 43% of US respondents say they use AI at work, compared to 32% in Europe in 2026.
Companies that use AI only for production purposes will widen the gap between the EU and the US. 7% of production companies in the US have already integrated AI, compared to just 4% in Europe.
Labor adoption in Europe is mixed, with 36% of respondents in the UK saying they use it for work, and 35.6% in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Italy has the lowest adoption rate of the European countries surveyed, with just one in four people saying they have introduced AI in their workplace. The report also said adoption has stagnated in France and Germany, with 28% and 31% of respondents using AI in the workplace.
This means AI adoption rates in the US are between 18% and 68% higher than in Europe, the study found.
AI-advocate employees are encouraged to use AI by their managers
Researchers suggest that the biggest difference in the use of AI between US and EU companies lies in their management structure.
U.S. respondents who use AI at work are more likely to say their manager encouraged them to do so and provided them with specific internal tools to use, with 42% saying they use both, compared to 17% and 16% in France and Italy, respectively.
“Nearly all of the adoption gap between the United States and Europe can be explained by considering strong incentives,” the study said.
U.S. workers are also motivated to use AI, the study found, as companies reward and promote AI-enabled employees.
In both the US and EU, the survey also found that workers who are not encouraged to use AI or delegated specific AI tools are less likely to report using AI in their work.
The size of the company is also important. The study found that employees at companies with 250 or more employees are more likely to be using AI than those working at smaller companies, both in the U.S. and in more advanced EU countries such as the U.K., Netherlands, and Sweden.
About a third of this gap can be explained by demographic trends, the study found.
The study found that across all countries, AI adoption rates were higher among university-educated male respondents under the age of 45 than among older, less-educated female respondents.
When the researchers controlled for respondents’ educational background, age, and gender between the US and EU countries, they found that Sweden’s AI adoption rate was about the same as the US.
More than half of respondents from all countries who work in computing or mathematics fields say they use AI in their jobs, compared to less than 27% in personal services and 33% in hotels and food services, indicating that a respondent’s field of work has a significant impact on whether they use AI.
Another EU data point shows similar structural barriers. Eurostat data published this week also shows that European companies are aware of the benefits AI can bring to their companies, but lack the technical expertise needed to implement AI into their businesses.
European companies are also concerned about data privacy and legal concerns, and cite cost as a barrier to AI adoption, Eurostat said.
