Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – The EU on Wednesday unveiled its plan for slashing dependence on American and Asian technology, including favouring European firms in the most sensitive public contracts for cloud computing and AI. The long-awaited “tech sovereignty” package is part of a raft of new EU rules aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing across different sectors and catching up with rival companies in the United States and China.
But the plans risk further antagonising the United States, which has pushed back hard at the European Union’s fines and rules against American tech companies. Big Tech lobby group CCIA Europe, whose members include US giants, slammed the moves on AI and cloud as “discriminatory” and “protectionist.” The issue is existential for the EU, with companies from outside the bloc providing more than 80 percent of its digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property, according to the European Commission.
Brussels worries its soft underbelly has been exposed after crises over chips and rare earths with China last year, coupled with fears that US President Donald Trump could one day pull the plug on American cloud computing via a “kill switch.” EU tech sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen, however, acknowledged that cutting reliance on foreign technology providers wouldn’t happen “overnight.”
Three US tech companies — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud — provide around 70 percent of cloud services in Europe. Virkkunen insisted the bloc was “not closing anyone out,” but told journalists that for “very critical” sectors like defence, it was “very important” that Europeans provide the services. This will be done through a scheme with four levels ranging from a general obligation to keep data in Europe to stricter requirements in the most sensitive areas, such as security and defence.
“We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said. But CCIA Europe’s Daniel Friedlaender said the new law would be “effectively giving national capitals carte blanche to shut out trusted global vendors from every major technology-producing nation outside the union.” The Business Software Alliance, a US-based digital lobby group, warned that the cloud sovereignty requirements “could restrict market access based on ownership and control structures rather than objective security outcomes.”
The package includes the AI and cloud rules that aim to encourage the construction of data centres in the EU, boosting demand for European-made semiconductors with a new chips proposal after a 2023 law yielded little success, and a push for the public sector to use more open-source software solutions that ensure greater control and flexibility, avoiding being locked in. The EU is estimated to spend 264 billion euros ($306 billion) annually on US cloud software, according to a 2025 report by the French consultancy Asteres. The sovereignty push is partly fuelled by worries over Europeans’ data, since the Trump-era 2018 Cloud Act allows Washington to demand access to data from US-based providers regardless of where it is held.
Brussels hopes the rules will triple the bloc’s data centre capacity in five to seven years, with a rating scheme to integrate them into Europe’s energy system in a “sustainable” manner. There are fears the new rules could provoke retaliation by Trump. But 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, though he expects US providers to remain “dominant” despite the EU push. The centrist Renew group said the commission’s proposal needed to be “stronger” if it wanted to increase Europe’s independence. The proposal will become law after approval by EU states and the EU parliament.
Brussels is making clear its determination already. The European Commission said last week it wants to reserve for European firms a share of the mobile satellite frequencies currently used by US operators. The latest moves also reflect a change in Brussels from just regulating Big Tech towards actively favouring European technology. In the latest example, the EU parliament said France’s Qwant would become the default search engine on its Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers from Thursday in a bid to cut reliance on foreign digital tools.
© 2024 AFP
