Digital Sovereignty: Why Europe should focus on technology, not territory
By Ben Brake
Tomorrow, the European Commission is expected to present its Technological Sovereignty Package.
AI infrastructure, cloud capacity, semiconductors, and access to compute have become strategic assets. The global race for AI leadership is accelerating rapidly: according to the Stanford AI Index, the United States produced more than 50% of significant AI models in 2024, while Europe accounted for only around 6%.
Against this backdrop, Europe’s concerns about technological dependencies are understandable and legitimate and the instinct to act is entirely justified. Yet the question facing Europe is not whether it should pursue technological sovereignty, but how.
A sovereignty agenda that prioritises the nationality of providers over resilience, security, and performance risks fragmenting the very market that European competitiveness depends on, at precisely the moment when scale matters most. This would weaken Europe’s ability to attract investment, deploy new technologies, and compete globally.
In this piece, we argue Europe can strengthen its competitiveness without closing itself off from the global partnerships that have long contributed to its success.
Europe’s strength comes from openness
Europe’s ability to compete globally has historically depended less on self-sufficiency than on its ability to attract investment, talent, and innovation from around the world. It has helped build Europe’s digital infrastructure, create jobs, and give European businesses and consumers access to world-class services.
Europe’s automotive, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors – among the most strategically important in the world – rely on global technology partnerships to operate, innovate, and compete. European SMEs access cloud infrastructure, AI tools, and digital platforms that allow them to reach global markets from day one. European consumers benefit from services built on innovation ecosystems that no single market could have produced alone.
Reducing access to these ecosystems would not automatically generate European alternatives. It would raise costs, slow adoption, and place European businesses at a disadvantage in the global markets they depend on. Resilience comes from building on strength, and Europe’s strength has always been its ability to attract, integrate, and compete globally.
Technological Sovereignty should focus on outcomes, not ownership
A well-designed sovereignty agenda can genuinely strengthen Europe’s resilience, and some elements of the Package point in the right direction. Thorough assessments of technology dependencies, supply-chain risks, and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities are valuable. They help organisations make better-informed procurement decisions and raise the overall level of security across the European economy. If the sovereignty agenda delivers that, it will have achieved something meaningful.
The most durable form of resilience, however, comes from what providers are required to do, not from where they are headquartered. Countries and organisations that have built genuinely secure digital environments have done so by establishing clear standards and enforcing them consistently across all providers operating in their markets.
The Package’s emphasis on European technologies, rather than technologies from any individual Member State, reflects a similar logic and is worth building on. Europe has real technological strengths. But realising them requires common standards and procurement processes that allow European solutions to compete on equal terms across the Single Market.
Denmark and Finland have decades of experience digitalising public services, yet many of the solutions developed there struggle to scale across larger European markets. Closing that gap would do more to strengthen European technological capacity than narrowing the pool of available providers, and it would do so in a way that reinforces the Single Market rather than fragmenting it further.
Trusted interdependence is not dependency
Europe already has extensive experience of technology partnerships that work, and that experience offers a useful model. SAP, Nokia, and Software AG are deeply embedded in critical infrastructure around the world. What makes these relationships function is shared standards, contractual accountability, and robust oversight. Governance (not nationality) is the determining factor.
Applying that logic across the Sovereignty Package would mean focusing on raising and enforcing standards for all providers operating in Europe, deepening the frameworks that make partnerships trustworthy, and ensuring that European institutions and businesses have the expertise to oversee and manage those relationships effectively.
The economic case for this approach is equally strong. Data-centre investments in Europe are expected to reach approximately €176 billion between 2026 and 2031. Preserving Europe as an attractive and integrated destination for global technology investment strengthens the very capabilities that a sovereignty agenda seeks to develop. The capital, expertise, and infrastructure that global investment brings are assets Europe can build on, provided governance frameworks are strong enough to manage the associated risks.
Digital sovereignty, pursued this way, becomes a genuine source of competitive strength. It allows Europe to strengthen resilience while remaining open to investment, innovation, and partnership. It enables Europe to develop its own capabilities without weakening the Single Market that underpins them.
Most importantly, it positions Europe to innovate, attract investment, and shape global technology markets from a position of confidence rather than defensiveness. In an increasingly interconnected world, that is the form of sovereignty most likely to succeed.
Considering geopolitical vulnerabilities is key
One of the main factors pushing for this package is to be found in the current geopolitical dynamics; when something becomes critical, it inevitably acquires a geopolitical dimension translating, therefore, into a potential point of strength or – on the contrary – vulnerability.
But caution, although good, must not become the leading sentiment; the EU must be reassured that many measures that promote a level-playing field are already in place.
Trusted and informed choices are key. New threats call for resilience and resilience is best done by diversifying soft- and hardware-providers alike. Upholding principles of interoperability will lead to safer solutions.
Please keep simplification in mind
At the same time, the proposed requirements to assess the “sovereignty risk” as well as the idea of reinforcing sovereignty efforts at Member State level via the National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) must not put more burden on governments nor discourage industrial investment and way to conduct a business in Europe.[1] Unfortunately, a possible 120 day audit process will do exactly this.
More importantly, urgent policy solutions should not be delayed while waiting for sovereign solutions. For example, making EU Digital identity interoperable, effective, and working across sectors and environments is key and urgent, as is the debate around age verification and making the internet safe.
Shared concerns come from across the geographic landscape
These concerns are shared across the European technology ecosystem. Earlier this year, the CEOs of top European tech companies ASML, Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral AI, Nokia, SAP and Siemens publicly called[2] for European technology regulation to be simplified and streamlined, arguing that Europe must focus on scaling innovation and strengthening competitiveness.
The implementation of the Sovereignty Package should reflect that same objective: reducing unnecessary complexity while strengthening Europe’s technological capabilities.
[1] Article 16, Charter of Fundamental rights of the European Union (2012/C 326/02).
[2] Press release, “ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet co-signed opinion piece with European technology companies”, 5 May 2026.
