Europe and Digital Sovereignty: Deciding in the Digital World without Depending on Others

This article has been developed in the context of work carried out by ForumDD on the development of European digital public infrastructures. The information and views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of European institutions.

Italian version of the article is available on ForumDD website.

Beyond the Rhetoric of “Digital Sovereignty”

The expression "digital sovereignty" is one of the most repeated in Brussels, but also one of the most misunderstood. Often invoked as a synonym for autonomy, it actually hides a deeper tension: how can Europe remain open and global, while at the same time independent and secure?

The problem is political and strategic, not technical. It concerns the Old Continent's ability to make decisions in the digital world without depending on others. The European Union increasingly appears to be a regulator without infrastructure, in the sense that it manages to adopt ambitious rules for regulating the matter, from the Digital Markets Act to the AI Act, but it does not control the infrastructures and technologies on which these rules must then be applied.

Others are in control. In today's digital world, a few players, almost all American or Chinese, control the most critical infrastructures: cloud, semiconductors, platforms, artificial intelligence.

This concentration of technological power generates a structural vulnerability that threatens Europe's competitiveness, security, and political autonomy itself. A strategy is needed that allows the resulting critical issues to be faced and overcome.

Two Distinct Pillars, a Single Challenge

To analyse technological dependence, it is necessary to distinguish two complementary yet distinct pillars.

The first is the Industrial pillar, which concerns the capacity of the European productive system to be integrated and competitive in global technological value chains. It is the pillar for productive autonomy, scale, and innovation. It must, in turn, operate on two parallel levels: (1) exploiting digital technology (data, automation, AI) to regain competitiveness in sectors where Europe is already strong; (2) developing enabling technologies,artificial intelligence, cloud/edge, semiconductors, cybersecurity, and secure hardware,to build progressive technological autonomy, capable of cooperating without depending on others.

The second is the Digital Public Infrastructures (DPI) pillar, which concerns the capacity of institutions to build digital services for social and welfare purposes, digital identity, payments, data, and public services. It is the pillar for functional autonomy, trust, and cohesion.

In summary, the industrial layer provides Europe with the capacity to compete (scale, innovation, technological autonomy), while the digital public infrastructures layer ensures autonomy, security, and continuity of services: both must contribute to guaranteeing rights and greater social justice. Focusing only on industry would strengthen competitiveness but would leave citizens and Public Administrations dependent on non-European platforms; focusing only on digital public infrastructures would ensure rights only "on paper," because the industrial fabric would not then be able to satisfy the technological needs. Real digital sovereignty, therefore, requires the integration of the two layers.

Silos and Fragmentation

To resolve the structural vulnerability previously mentioned, it is essential to first address the political fragmentation among Member States and the dispersion of decision-making processes between Member States and the Commission. Industrial and digital policies remain shared competences, where no one truly decides. Strategic choices are dispersed between national and European levels, enormously slowing down the adoption of decisive choices in this area.

Recently, although not entirely incisively, this deadlock has begun to be addressed. A first sign of coordination is represented by the Franco-German initiative on European digital sovereignty, formalized during the Paris and Berlin Summit in August 2025.

The joint document, the German-French Economic Agenda for Digital Sovereignty, proposes a common vision on cloud, industrial data, and artificial intelligence, with the aim of building a “European Industrial Data Space” and shared governance of strategic digital infrastructures. It is a step in the right direction: a joint industrial agenda aimed at creating critical mass, common skills, and an open and sovereign innovation model.

However, even this bilateral cooperation shows the limits of fragmentation. As reported after the last European Council in October 2025, Paris and Berlin expressed diverging visions on the nature of digital sovereignty: Germany tends to favor a market-oriented approach focused on industrial competitiveness, while France insists on a more political and statist view of technological sovereignty.

These divergences, even between the two founding countries of the Union, confirm how difficult it is to build a true European strategy without a unitary institutional framework and binding decision-making mechanisms.

As long as each country pursues its own "national digital sovereignty," Europe will not have a common one. Political courage is needed to cede part of sovereignty to the Union, to define a shared industrial policy and build truly European digital infrastructures.

Only in this way will we have the scale, speed, and consistency necessary to compete globally against the United States and China.

A Long-Term Strategy

Having overcome the political limits that have emerged so far, and with the hope that initiatives like the Franco-German one on digital sovereignty will multiply, aimed at defining a unitary European industrial agenda, it is essential to outline a clear European path to digital sovereignty. This path must firmly distance itself both from an unrealistic autarky and from a defeatist delegation to external powers.

A credible strategy must be articulated according to the two distinct but intrinsically complementary pillars anticipated at the beginning: the industrial pillar and the digital public infrastructures pillar briefly outlined above.

The Industrial Pillar: Competitiveness and Technological Autonomy

The industrial pillar aims to strengthen the capacity of the European productive system to be fully integrated and competitive in the global technological value chains. Its task is twofold:

1. To fully exploit digital technologies to relaunch competitiveness in sectors where Europe already boasts leadership (advanced manufacturing, energy, mobility, aerospace).
2. To develop strategic technologies, artificial intelligence, cloud, semiconductors, cybersecurity, and secure hardware, to build progressive technological autonomy and cooperate as equals in global value chains.

Technological giants (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) are based on industrial and cultural models (vertical integration, global scale, strong risk appetite) that are neither realistic nor desirable to replicate in Europe. Replicating them would require simultaneously excelling in maximum engineering complexity and in production/management at thin margins on a planetary scale: two logics difficult to combine in the current European context.

For this reason, Europe must strategically shift the playing field by leveraging its unparalleled competitive advantage: rules, open and common standards, interoperability, and open governance. This must be accompanied by a decisive concentration of public and private investments in the strategic technological areas previously identified.

In this way, Europe does not chase the scale of the hyperscalers but redefines the technological stack in an open and genuinely competitive key. The goal, in fact, is not to create a European "Big Tech," but a European path to diffused innovation. Initiatives like the Chips Act, the IPCEI projects, or open architectures like RISC-V confirm that European industrial collaboration can produce excellent results, as ASML, Airbus, and Galileo already demonstrate.

Another inspiring model could be CERN: a common infrastructure with European governance and shared results, capable of catalyzing research, industry, and public innovation.

The Digital Public Infrastructures (DPI) Pillar

This pillar concerns the capacity of institutions to design and manage sovereign digital services that guarantee full access to the digital society, simplify regulatory compliance for businesses, and pursue crucial goals of welfare and social cohesion. This pillar includes digital identity, payments, data exchange, and interoperable public services. It is the key element that ensures functional autonomy, civic trust, and social cohesion.

To achieve this, a strategy guided by a clear political agenda is necessary, based on the values enshrined in the Union's charters, universal welfare, and the redistribution of wealth through equitable and secure access to digital services. Digital Public Infrastructures (DPI), such as the EUDI Wallet, the Digital Euro, and European Data Spaces, must become the backbone of European digital welfare, rising to tools of inclusion and rights, overcoming the mere logic of administrative efficiency.

Competing and Protecting: A Tension to Manage

Digital sovereignty for Europe does not equate to isolation, but to the strategic capacity to cooperate from a position of autonomy. It is based on a concept of managed interdependence, which constitutes the pillar of European Digital Cooperation. This strategy is realized by forging strategic alliances beyond EU borders, particularly with key partners such as India and Brazil for digital payment systems.

This model is designed to dynamically balance: competitiveness and digital public goods; autonomy and openness; innovation and the protection of rights (as analyzed in my recent article dedicated to these themes “Digital cooperation: the strategic response to technological dependence”).

The primary goal is the joint development of interoperable platforms, particularly in digital identity systems (e.g., wallets and verifiable attestations) and digital payments (e.g., central bank digital currencies). This effort aims to create robust and open alternatives to the solutions currently dominated by a few global players. The success of this cooperation depends on clear rules, which include a level playing field and reciprocal technology transfer.

In this area, Europe faces an intrinsic strategic tension: competing globally and, at the same time, protecting the infrastructure and data of its citizens, a challenge that is particularly critical within international alliances. Digital Cooperation is the programmatic response to manage and balance this tension, not to eliminate it. It must combine innovation and security, openness and trust, efficiency and rights.

This strategy recognizes interdependence as a current and inevitable condition but commits to managing it based on a common political agenda. Ultimately, true European sovereignty is consolidated only through cooperation.