Energy? Largely imported. Manufacturing? Hollowed out. Nuclear deterrence? Borrowed. And now Europe is staring into the uncomfortable mirror of its digital life and asking: whose data is this, exactly?
The European Commission unveiled its long-awaited tech sovereignty roadmap this Wednesday, according to France 24, laying out a strategic vision for how Europe plans to stop being a passive consumer of digital infrastructure built, owned, and operated by everyone but Europeans.
The problem, in plain English
If you are an EU citizen reading this on a browser you did not build, hosted on a server you do not own, through an internet backbone you have no control over - congratulations, you have just illustrated the core of Europe's digital sovereignty problem. The personal data of hundreds of millions of Europeans currently flows through systems largely controlled by American tech giants, a reality that has made regulators increasingly twitchy, especially in the post-Snowden, post-TikTok-scare, post-everything era.
Europe has tried the regulatory route before - GDPR being the most famous attempt to put fences around data. But critics argue that rules without infrastructure is a bit like putting a lock on a door you do not own. You can slow people down, but you are not really in control.
What the roadmap is aiming for
The Commission's initiative targets what it describes as strategic digital sectors - areas where European dependency on foreign technology is considered a vulnerability rather than a convenience. This includes cloud computing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and the underlying connectivity networks that tie it all together.
The ambition is significant. The execution, as always with EU-scale policy projects, is where things get complicated. Coordinating 27 member states with wildly different digital economies, regulatory appetites, and national champions is not exactly a weekend project.
Is this actually different this time?
Europe has a complicated history with tech ambitions. Remember when it was going to build its own search engine? Its own social network? The continent has a talent for producing world-class regulators and a somewhat spottier record of producing world-class tech companies.
That said, the geopolitical climate has shifted dramatically. With transatlantic relations under strain and digital infrastructure increasingly treated as a national security issue globally, the political will to back these initiatives with actual funding - not just good intentions and a strongly worded press release - may finally be there.
Whether Europe can move fast enough, and with enough industrial coherence, to matter in a world where the US and China are sprinting ahead is the real question hanging over this roadmap.
The answer, as always in European politics, is: it depends on who you ask and how many summits it takes to find out.
