Market data
Why European Companies Do Not Use AI: Barriers Data 2025
In 2025, 7.8% of EU enterprises named "lack of relevant expertise" as a reason for not using AI, the most cited barrier in Eurostat's survey, ahead of "unclear legal consequences" at 5.9%.
What stops companies from using AI?
| Item | Latest | Earlier year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lack of relevant expertise (2025) | 7.8% | 7.1% | |
| Unclear legal consequences (2025) | 5.9% | 5.3% | |
| Data protection and privacy concerns (2025) | 5.8% | 4.9% | |
| Data availability or quality (2025) | 4.8% | 4.4% | |
| Incompatibility with existing systems (2025) | 4.6% | 4.2% | |
| Costs seem too high (2025) | 4.2% | 3.3% | |
| Ethical considerations (2025) | 2.7% | 2.4% | |
| AI judged not useful for the business (2025) | 2.0% | 2.1% |
The denominator is every enterprise, so these shares are smaller than a share of non-users would be. A company can name several reasons.
Which barriers are growing fastest?
Data protection and privacy concerns rose by 0.9 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, the largest increase of the eight reasons, followed by costs seem too high (0.9 points).
How many companies have considered AI but not adopted it?
In 2025, 11.1% of EU enterprises had considered using AI technologies. Compared with the adoption figure on the market data overview, the gap between considering and using is where the barriers above apply.
Where are data protection concerns highest?
Finland reports the highest share citing data protection and privacy as a barrier (9.0%), then Germany (9.0%) and Austria (7.5%). The EU figure is 5.8%.
Source
Figures: Eurostat table isoc_eb_ai, refreshed 2026-10-12. The overview with the country ranking is on market data.