🚨 Europe Must Act Now on Digital Sovereignty 🚨

Today, almost 100 European companies issued a strong statement: the EU must take bold, strategic action to reclaim control over its digital infrastructure.

🚨 Europe Must Act Now on Digital Sovereignty 🚨

Today, almost 100 European companies issued a strong statement: the EU must take bold, strategic action to reclaim control over its digital infrastructure. While Axel Voss has warned already in 2019 that we are a digital colony, the recent geopolitical landscape must have convinced almost everyone by now: our technological dependence is a huge liability for our industry as well as society. If we want to safeguard our democratic system and European values, we need to act NOW!

The practical steps proposed by the CEOs? (1) Boost demand for European Tech with public procurement and private sector incentives that steer private demand towards European-led solution, (2) Strengthen supply and infrastructure with federation & pooling based on open-source solutions and common industry standards, (3) Focus on high-impact digital services with KPIs and BDs to ensure measurable success, and (4) Restructure and expand funding mechanisms to focus on market-relevant, result-oriented projects.

It is important to underline that the companies call for immediate, industry-led action. While the European Commission has, over the past years, initiated some promising projects in this regard (i.e. EU Digital Identity Wallet, data spaces, Digital Euro), they all lack the necessary coordination and scale. As it was nicely illustrated by the Draghi Report, one of the biggest structural problems of the EU is its tendency to work in policy silos. This is in fact the biggest obstacle for the EuroStack project, not the sometimes assumed costs. Other regions have already shown that the creation of DPIs can be done quickly and with reasonable costs.

To sum up, regulation alone will not solve Europe’s digital dependency. We need an industry-driven, results-oriented approach to strengthen our capabilities. The best role for the EU Institutions is to support that push by mobilizing industry, reshaping funding priorities, and implementing complementary strategies ... before it’s too late.

Read the full open letter here.