This week in Paris, the Counter Extremism Project participated in the first in-person meeting of ExTech, a Franco-German initiative funded by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and implemented with The JOS Project as CEP’s French partner. 

 

Launched earlier this year, ExTech brings together French and German experts, practitioners, and policymakers to examine how artificial intelligence is reshaping extremism, radicalization, and disinformation, and how public policy needs to adapt in response. 

 

Representing CEP, Hans-Jakob Schindler, Juncal Fernández-Garayzábal and Sofia Koller, co-founder and co-director of ExTech, joined participants from France and Germany for a policy roundtable focused on moving from threat identification to practical responses. Discussions examined the use of AI for extremist propaganda, disinformation, and manipulated content, before turning to the regulatory, technical, and preventive measures needed to strengthen resilience. 

 

A key objective of the meeting was to connect this expert analysis directly with EU-level policymaking. By bringing practitioners and researchers into dialogue with European policymakers, ExTech aims to ensure that emerging responses to AI-enabled extremism are informed by operational realities as well as by regulatory and institutional considerations.

 

The Paris meeting marks an important step in ExTech’s broader ambition: to strengthen Franco-German cooperation, bridge policy and practice, and translate analysis into actionable recommendations for European decision-makers and civil society. 

 

The work does not stop here. In the coming weeks, ExTech will publish two Englishlanguage policy briefs drawing on the network’s research and discussions, with a focus on emerging challenges and practical responses to AI-enabled extremism.