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AI as a public capability: what France and the Nordics are teaching the world

insight
January 13, 2026
9 min read

Authors

Christian-Haller Christian Haller

President for France at Nagarro, leading enterprise transformation through digital engineering and tailored solutions across the French market.

Peter Hammer

Peter is a strategy leader, a creative thinker, and a powerful communicator working towards connecting businesses with technology.

AI French–Nordic model

When people talk about artificial intelligence, they often imagine distant labs or dramatic breakthroughs. But Europe is already utilizing AI in its safest strength, such as processing permit applications in French municipalities, answering routine questions about public services in Nordic cities. Interestingly, most citizens never even interact with “AI” directly; they just notice fewer delays and clearer responses.

That subtle presence signals a bigger shift. AI is no longer treated as a tool to deploy; it’s a public capability, shared infrastructure that governments are governing with a lot of care, not just rollouts. In different ways, France and the Nordic countries are demonstrating what that looks like in practice.

The invisible partner in public administration

Across Europe, AI has moved out of pilots to everyday public workflows as practical support for document handling, eligibility checks, and workload prioritization, which are all the unglamorous tasks that shape how public services feel on the ground.

In France, this adoption is incremental and dispersed. There is no single, centralized inventory of AI systems because AI isn’t being introduced as a single sweeping reform. It’s being absorbed gradually across ministries and local administrations, aligned with broader public data strategies and interagency coordination efforts.

The Nordic countries start from a different place. With high digital public service usage already in place, AI can plug naturally into existing systems. In Finland, for example, most citizens already rely on digital channels to interact with the state. Programs like AuroraAI are designed to help people move across services, employment, education, and health, without forcing them to understand which agency owns what.

In both contexts, AI isn’t positioned as a replacement for public servants or a showcase technology. It functions as an enabling layer, reducing friction and enabling institutions to operate more smoothly.

Two cultures, one shared conclusion

France and the Nordic countries approach AI from different cultural perspectives, yet reach a similar conclusion: governance matters more than novelty.

France’s public sector is shaped by a long-standing culture of administrative accountability. Public decisions must be explainable, traceable, and open to challenge. That expectation existed long before AI arrived, and it is now shaping how AI is used. Systems that assist with eligibility or classification cannot operate as black boxes. Citizens must be able to understand outcomes and seek recourse when something goes wrong.

This creates friction, but also discipline. Clarity around responsibility, escalation paths, and human oversight is required from the start.

France and the Nordics- AI future-readiness

The Nordic countries bring a different strength. With mature digital infrastructure and high institutional trust, they can experiment more quickly. Citizens are accustomed to digital public services, and that familiarity creates room to introduce new tools carefully. Privacy safeguards and user consent are built into system design, reinforcing trust rather than assuming it.

Different paths, same destination: AI that earns public confidence.

The rulebook everyone is learning to follow

Both France and the Nordic states are aligning under the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, the world’s first comprehensive AI regulation. Introduced in 2024 and rolling out through 2026, it establishes a shared framework for governing AI across Europe.

The structure is straightforward. AI systems are classified by risk. Certain practices, such as social scoring, are banned outright. High-risk uses face strict requirements, including human oversight, quality data standards, and transparency. Even lower-risk applications must be clear about when AI is involved.

This isn’t regulation for its own sake. It forces organizations to address risk, accountability, and ethics before deployment, not after problems surface. For France and the Nordics, the framework reinforces existing habits. For many others, it signals what responsible use will increasingly require.

When constraints become advantages

Public institutions have long been criticized for moving cautiously. In the age of AI, that caution is no longer a weakness. It is the operating model AI increasingly requires.

Public agencies are built to function under scrutiny. Every decision must be justified, audited, and, when necessary, reversed. Risk is surfaced early, not absorbed silently. Fairness is not a preference; it is a requirement. These disciplines weren’t created for AI, but AI cannot scale without them.

As enterprises push AI into decisions that shape people’s lives, credit approval, hiring, pricing, and access to services, they are running into the same realities public institutions have navigated for decades. Black-box decisions don’t hold. Accountability gaps don’t scale. Bias discovered after deployment becomes a liability, not a learning.

Lessons from France and the Nordics for a more resilient future

This shift is already visible at the top. Boards are demanding defensible outcomes, not just performance metrics. Regulators are setting clearer expectations. Customers are asking harder questions. The space for experimentation without responsibility is shrinking.

What once slowed the public sector is now setting the standard. The governance discipline built over time is defining what credible, scalable AI looks like, inside government and well beyond it.

This isn’t restraint; it’s readiness.

What comes next: governing intelligence

Governments are learning how to move with more discipline and scale without losing control, and the enterprises are discovering that operating under scrutiny is no longer optional. It’s the cost of using AI in decisions that matter. These two paths are converging around a shared reality: intelligence without governance does not hold.

The next phase of AI will not be defined by technical sophistication alone. It will be defined by judgment, knowing where AI belongs, where it doesn’t, and who remains accountable when it acts. Systems that cannot be governed cannot be trusted. Systems that cannot be trusted will not scale.

France and the Nordic countries are not chasing visibility or speed. They are integrating AI deliberately into public life, anchoring it in service quality, legal clarity, and responsibility. Progress is measured by reliability, not novelty.

That is what AI looks like when it becomes a public capability. Not something to deploy quickly, but something to steward carefully. And that is the standard the rest of the world is moving toward.

Perspective

What France and the Nordic countries show is simple. The hard part of using AI isn’t the technology. It’s the judgment around it. Knowing when AI helps, when it doesn’t, and who stands behind its decisions matters more than any model or system. That kind of discipline doesn’t come from tools. It comes from how institutions are built and how leaders take responsibility.

That’s the lesson taking shape across Europe.

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