Towards more digital sovereignty – What did the French Presidency achieve and what still needs to be done?

 

Advancing Europe’s strategic autonomy is a key objective of the European Commission – particularly with regards to the digital domain.

The COVID pandemic has demonstrated the need to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more digital and more resilient economic and industrial model in order to maintain and strengthen Europe’s aspirations for sustainable competitiveness.

Under the French Presidency the EU passed a groundbreaking piece of legislation – the Digital Markets Act. It will limit the power of gatekeeping platforms and aims to keep digital markets fair and open to competition – a prerequisite for sovereignty. Paris also supported the Commission’s plans to create trusted alternatives to non-EU offerings, by developing a European cloud ecosystem and proposing a European Digital Identity. With the new chip act, Commissioner Breton wants to reduce dependencies in the semiconductor sector, as the race for the most advanced chips is a race for technological and industrial leadership.

These are important steps, but many stakeholders are looking for more under the Czech presidency. Europe is still largely dependent on non-European companies for most of its digital life. Although the New Data Act is supposed to help the European data economy flourish, much of the industrial data generated in Europe is so far stored and processed by cloud providers abroad, and user-driven innovation comes mainly from outside the EU. To thrive economically, Europe must regain more autonomy over data and digital technology. (...)