Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – The EU will set out on Wednesday how the 27-country bloc hopes to slash its dependence on American and Asian technology and favor European digital alternatives. The plans risk further angering the United States, which has pushed back hard at the European Union’s fines and rules in recent years against American tech companies. The bloc has in the past year ramped up its efforts to boost domestic manufacturing across different sectors and catch up with rival companies in the United States and China.
EU tech tsar Henna Virkkunen will unveil the new “technological sovereignty” package in Brussels, including new rules on chips, cloud computing, and AI. The goal is to build digital ecosystems that ensure Europe retains control over services and data and resists foreign interference. Brussels worries its soft underbelly has been exposed after crises over chips and rare earths with China last year, coupled with fears that an angry President Donald Trump could one day pull the plug on US cloud computing via a “kill switch”.
In a draft strategy document seen by AFP, the EU stated it is reliant on foreign providers for “over 80 percent of its digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property,” based on an official 2023 report. The EU, however, insists the push is aimed not at shutting out foreign providers but at strengthening European industry and keeping itself in the AI race.
Based on the text seen by AFP, the package will include a new law on cloud computing and artificial intelligence to encourage the construction of data centers in the EU. Brussels hopes the rules will triple the bloc’s capacity in the next five to seven years. Additionally, there will be a boost in the demand for European-made semiconductors with a new chips law, and a push for the public sector to use more open-source software solutions that ensure greater control and flexibility, avoiding being locked in. Furthermore, the EU aims to create a common scheme to rate the sustainability of data centers.
Cloud computing is dominated by US platforms, with the three biggest—Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud—making up 70 percent of the European market. The EU is estimated to spend 264 billion euros ($307 billion) annually on US cloud software, according to a 2025 report by French consultancy Asteres. Brussels is also expected to impose sovereignty criteria for public contracts in the cloud and AI sectors, insisting that governments undertake “sovereignty risk assessments” to identify European providers when needed.
The push is partly fueled by concerns over Europeans’ data since the Trump-era 2018 Cloud Act allows Washington to demand access to data from US-based providers regardless of where the information is held. There are fears that the new rules could provoke retaliation by Trump. However, an EU lawmaker who has worked closely on tech sovereignty told reporters Tuesday that Europe “should not bow down to pressure.”
“We set our rules in Europe, according to the needs and the demands of the European citizens,” said Matthias Ecke of the Socialists and Democrats, although he expects US providers to remain “dominant” despite the EU’s push. Brussels is making clear its determination. The European Commission stated last week that it wants to reserve for European firms a share of the mobile satellite frequencies currently used by US operators.
The latest moves reflect a change in Brussels, shifting away from merely regulating Big Tech to favoring European technology. Chips, cloud computing, and AI “are the nervous system of the modern economy”, powering everything from defense to healthcare, EU lawmaker Oliver Schenk said. “Europe therefore cannot afford to remain merely a consumer of critical technologies developed elsewhere,” the conservative MEP told AFP.
© 2024 AFP
