The most connected person in EU AI
Matthieu Delescluse is a Head of Unit in DG Connect — the Commission directorate responsible for digital policy. In the past 6 months, he has met with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Black Forest Labs, Meta, Amazon, IBM, and DeepL — 9 of the 10 major AI companies in our dataset. That is 28 meetings on artificial intelligence from a single official.
No Commissioner has met that many AI companies in the same period. No Director-General comes close. Delescluse's role in the GPAI Code of Practice — the implementation framework that will determine how AI companies operate in Europe — makes him the single most consequential person in EU AI regulation that most people have never heard of.
The inner circle
Below Delescluse, Director Lucilla Sioli met 5 AI companies in 11 meetings. Cabinet member Werner Stengg — the long-serving digital policy gatekeeper — met 4 in 12 meetings. Head of Unit Emmanuelle Du Chalard met 3 in 7 meetings. Cabinet member Ann-Sofie Ronnlund met 3 in 6.
That is 6 officials. They collectively held over 70 meetings with the world's most powerful AI companies. The GPAI Code of Practice, the AI Omnibus simplification, and the enforcement framework for the AI Act are all being shaped in these conversations. When Anthropic meets Delescluse about the Code of Practice signatory taskforce, and OpenAI meets him the following week, the two companies are competing for the same official's interpretation of the same rules.
Why this matters
EU transparency rules require these meetings to be disclosed. But disclosure is not the same as scrutiny. The pattern — where a handful of mid-level officials hold the keys to an entire industry's regulatory framework — raises questions about capacity, capture, and the balance between technical expertise and democratic oversight. GovLens maps every meeting, every official, every company. Search any AI company to see exactly who they met and when.