EU Unveils Tech Sovereignty Plan to Cut US Dependence

The European Commission is unveiling a sweeping technological sovereignty package on June 3 in Brussels, aiming to dramatically reduce the 27-nation bloc's dependence on American and Asian technology companies. The initiative, led by EU Tech Sovereignty Commissioner Henna Virkkunen, includes new legislation on cloud computing and artificial intelligence, a revamped Chips Act to boost European semiconductor production, and requirements for the public sector to adopt open-source software solutions. The strategy addresses concerns that the EU relies on foreign providers for over 80 percent of its digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property, according to official reports. The package sets an ambitious target to triple the EU's data centre capacity within five to seven years while creating a common European scheme to rate data centre sustainability. Brussels will impose sovereignty criteria for public contracts in cloud and AI sectors, forcing governments to conduct "sovereignty risk assessments" to identify European alternatives. This approach particularly targets US platforms, as Microsoft's Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud currently dominate 70 percent of the European market, with the EU spending an estimated 264 billion euros annually on American cloud software alone. The push is partly driven by concerns over the Trump-era 2018 Cloud Act, which allows Washington to demand access to data from US-based providers regardless of where information is stored. There are also fears that geopolitical tensions could lead to access disruptions. While acknowledging the plan may provoke retaliation from Washington, EU lawmakers have defended the initiative as necessary for European autonomy. Conservative MEP Oliver Schenk stated that chips, cloud computing, and AI "are the nervous system of the modern economy," arguing that "Europe therefore cannot afford to remain merely a consumer of critical technologies developed elsewhere."