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Digital sovereignty \u2013 a government\u2019s ownership and control of the technology infrastructure supporting digital networks within its jurisdiction \u2013 is rising up the political agenda<\/a> in\u00a0Brussels.\u00a0<\/p>\n Digital infrastructure and services are based overwhelmingly in the US, and the government there has for decades used this technological dominance as a tool for foreign policy and spycraft. But resistance is finally boiling in Europe, fuelled not by the infamous Snowden revelations nor the US Cloud Act, which stipulates that US businesses must surrender their data should the country\u2019s intelligence agencies demand it, but by an ill-fated speech delivered by the US vice-president, JD\u00a0Vance.<\/p>\n Speaking at the 2025 Munich Security Conference in February this year, Vance criticised EU leaders for allegedly failing to uphold Western democratic values and questioned the legitimacy of EU institutions. Against a backdrop of US policy changes regarding the war in Ukraine, the speech was perceived by US allies and adversaries as an attack on Europe and exacerbated a rift in transatlantic relations.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Trump administration threatened to impose tariffs on the bloc owing to its strict regulation of Silicon Valley firms, thus making big tech not just an economic issue but a foreign policy issue,\u00a0too.\u00a0<\/p>\n Six months after Vance\u2019s speech, technologists, policymakers, think-tanks and antitrust experts gathered in Munich for the annual Nextcloud Summit to determine the way forward for technological autonomy in\u00a0Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are being blackmailed by the current US administration and the American and Chinese tech companies,\u201d said Alexandra Geese, the German Greens MEP who helped craft Europe\u2019s Digital Services Act, at a press conference.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is why it\u2019s so important that we build our own technological and digital infrastructure, that we support our own companies, that we keep the talent we have here in Europe,\u201d she added. \u201cNot closing Europe off, but working with open standards.\u201d<\/p>\n Hyperscalers\u2019 \u2018army of lobbyists\u2019 working against digital sovereignty<\/p>\n Cristina Caffara, an economist and antitrust expert, says the hyperscalers have responded to this movement by deploying an \u201carmy of lobbyists\u201d in Brussels. Together with Geese, Caffara launched the Eurostack policy initiative, which aims to build digital sovereignty in Europe and enhance the digital competitiveness of the Continent.<\/p>\n At the press conference, Caffara said the lobbyists are \u201crelentlessly\u201d targeting senior figures in Brussels to derail digital sovereignty efforts in Europe. The panellists even speculated that the EU-backed digital sovereignty initiative, Gaia-X,<\/a> had been \u201cinfiltrated\u201d by tech companies seeking to sabotage the movement by overloading it with\u00a0bureaucracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s very easy to imagine Trump deciding a German company is evil and stopping its\u00a0services<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The hyperscalers are not deaf to Europeans\u2019 concerns. Google and Microsoft, for instance, recently issued public statements designed to allay any worries about US hostilities; providers are building strictly EU-regulated data centres across Europe; and, earlier this year, Google launched its \u2018cloud data boundary\u2019, which gives customers more control over where data is stored and processed, and a \u2018user data shelf\u2019 for validating the security of apps built via that data\u00a0boundary.<\/p>\n However, Frank Karlitschek, the CEO of Nextcloud, which supplies customers including France\u2019s interior ministry and Amnesty International with open-source, self-hosted collaboration software, describes such moves from the hyperscalers as \u201csovereignty-washing\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201c[The hyperscalers] say they have hosting centres in Europe, so it\u2019s all fine. But the Cloud Act states that if you\u2019re a US organisation, you follow the US law, which means you need to give US agencies access to this data,\u201d Karlitschek said at the press conference.<\/p>\n Too late to take back\u00a0control?<\/p>\n The threats described by the panellists are not merely theoretical. In countries hit by US sanctions, citizens and businesses have found themselves suddenly unable to access the digital services they rely on<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is a risk, added Geese, that the hyperscalers will be further politicised by the Trump administration and restrict the provision of digital services to certain users should doing so prove politically expedient.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to imagine Trump deciding that a German company is evil and then stopping its services,\u201d said <\/strong>Geese. \u201cThe potential is definitely there.\u201d<\/p>\n We are being blackmailed by the current US administration<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But if mitigating these risks requires Europe to become truly digitally sovereign, businesses in the bloc will have to cope with uncertainty in the near\u00a0term.<\/p>\n Not only are the most powerful software companies headquartered in the US, but many of the most common components or architectures are also manufactured by American businesses, such as Intel, Nvidia and\u00a0AMD.<\/p>\n The most attractive alternatives to US tech services are arguably found in China. Of course, doing business with Chinese providers also presents significant challenges. But projects Europe has begun some major intiatives of its own. For instance, a joint venture<\/a> between TSMC, Infineon, NXP and Bosch is building a \u20ac10bn (\u00a38.46bn) microchip fabrication plant in Germany to support European chip production.<\/p>\n Still, US tech firms continue to win service contracts in Europe. Some Nextcloud Summit attendees were horrified to learn that the IT provider for Germany\u2019s armed forces had contracted Google for the Bundeswehr\u2019s cloud services<\/a>.<\/p>\n Geese is hopeful, however. \u201cWe should have started a lot earlier,\u201d she said. \u201cI often get the question, \u2018Is it too late?\u2019 Well, it\u2019s always too late. But let\u2019s start\u00a0now.\u201d<\/p>\n Digital sovereignty and the\u00a0UK\u00a0<\/p>\n Concerns about digital sovereignty have had little influence on UK policies thus\u00a0far.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Keir Starmer, the UK hopes to forge its own path, unbeholden to Europe, the US or China<\/a>; to become an \u201cAI superpower\u201d.\u00a0But, in practice, the UK appears to be hewing closer to the US, having just welcomed a wave of investment in data centre infrastructure from Oracle, AWS, Google and Microsoft.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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