The European Commission has unveiled a sweeping package of measures aimed at reducing Europe's deep dependence on American and Chinese technology companies, setting ambitious targets including tripling the continent's data centre capacity within seven years and revitalising its semiconductor industry. The initiative, presented in Brussels this week, includes two new legislative proposals — a "Chips Act 2.0" and a Cloud and AI Development Act — alongside strategies to expand the use of open-source software across European institutions and governments.

The urgency behind the plan is driven by a stark reality: European governments and companies spend an estimated €264 billion annually on technology products and services from outside the EU, with American giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta capturing the lion's share. EU officials have warned of a so-called "kill switch" risk — the possibility that the United States or China could, through sanctions or export restrictions, partially paralyse Europe's digital infrastructure. That fear proved tangible when the International Criminal Court in The Hague, after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on its chief prosecutor over arrest warrants related to the Gaza conflict, found that the prosecutor had lost access to his Microsoft Outlook email account. The court subsequently migrated to OpenDesk, an open-source platform developed by a German state-owned company.

Digital Commissioner Henna Virkkunen insisted the measures were not protectionist and were not directed against the United States. "Europe has everything it needs to play a leading role," she said. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen framed the issue in terms of strategic autonomy: "We cannot afford to depend on others to keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable, and our services secure." The European Parliament signalled its own intent by announcing it would switch its default search engine from Google to Qwant, a French alternative — a modest but symbolic move. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is pursuing a broader transition to open-source software, and Dutch telecoms operator KPN recently launched a joint "European sovereign cloud" with Germany's Schwarz Digits, the technology arm of the Lidl supermarket group.

Analysts and policymakers, however, acknowledge that the plan faces significant structural obstacles. Europe's role in the global chip supply chain, while not negligible — Dutch firm ASML produces the specialised lithography machines that chipmaker TSMC in Taiwan depends on — remains that of a niche player. ASML earns only around one percent of its revenue in Europe. A previous chip initiative, the 2023 European Chips Act, succeeded in attracting investment such as a TSMC factory under construction in Dresden, Germany, but Europe's global market share stagnated as the sector grew faster elsewhere, driven by the artificial intelligence boom. Critically, the new package comes with no fresh EU funding, and its recommendations are not binding on member states.

Political reactions were mixed. Some centre-right MEPs called the proposal "bold and pragmatic," while a German Social Democrat noted that US providers "are dominant and will remain so," even as he welcomed the effort to define technological sovereignty. On the left, criticism was sharper: replacing one monopoly with another — whether American or European — would not constitute genuine digital sovereignty, argued one MEP, who called instead for digital infrastructure to be oriented around the public good. Tech expert Bert Hubert offered a more optimistic reading, suggesting that a diverse ecosystem of smaller European providers — rather than a single European giant — may be both more realistic and more desirable.