President Donald Trump has never been less predictable, and relations between continents continue to falter. Voices are calling for independence from US tech.
American-based companies are providing much of the cloud computing and AI services that make up the technology that millions of Europeans use in their everyday lives – from Microsoft to Meta, Apple to Uber. These perils, debated hotly before the Trump era, are now being taken more seriously in Europe – pushing for greater preference of European companies in public contracts and effectively endorsing European alternatives to some of the popular US service brands.
As Trump turns the screws ever tighter with his tariffs and while Europe threatens to tax US tech unless a deal is struck to end the imminent trade war, the sense of urgency increases. Sovereignty at the center of tech has dominated the last weeks: the European Union has just unveiled its strategy to enter the fierce global arms race on artificial intelligence, and is even talking about establishing its own payment system able to compete against Mastercard.
“We have to build up our own capacities when it comes to technologies,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen has said, identifying three critical sectors: AI, quantum and semiconductors. A key concern is that if ties worsen, Washington could potentially weaponise US digital dominance against Europe — with Trump’s administration already taking aim at the bloc’s tech rules. That is giving fresh impetus to demands by industry, experts and EU lawmakers for Europe to bolster its infrastructure and cut reliance on a small group of US firms. “Relying exclusively on non-European technologies exposes us to strategic and economic risks,” said EU lawmaker Stephanie Yon-Courtin, who focuses on digital issues, pointing to US limits on semiconductor exports as one example.
Buy European Movement
The data paints a stark picture. Around two-thirds of Europe’s cloud market is in the hands of US titans Amazon, Microsoft and Google, while the share of European cloud providers has been in steady decline, falling to 13 percent in 2022. Twenty-three percent of the bloc’s total high-tech imports in 2023 came from the United States, second only to China, in everything from aerospace and pharmaceutical tech to smartphones and chips.
The idea of a social media platform from Europe to displace either Facebook or X is far fetched, but officials maintain that the race is far from over in the supremely important AI sector. According to the EU, public procurement would benefit from a “European preference for critical sectors and technologies” to back the European AI industry.
“Incentives to buy European are important,” Benjamin Revcolevschi, chief executive of French cloud provider OVHcloud, told the news wire, welcoming the broader made-in-Europe push. The European government relations lead at the Electronics Industry Association IPC, Alison James, summarized: “We must have what we need for our key industries and our critical industries to be able to make our stuff.”
There are proposals for more European independence from US fintechs: President Christine Lagarde is urging for a “European offer” to counter American (Mastercard, Visa and Paypal) and Chinese (Alipay) payment systems. Answers to their call can be found in ongoing discussions among EU capitals to create a “fully European payment system”. But industry insiders know that achieving technological sovereignty is a challenging investment when the EU is putting serious money into defense. Digital policy specialists calculate that a European tech ecosystem with layers including AI, in what is being considered a EuroStack initiative, would cost €300 billion($340 billion) by 2035. The American trade group Chamber of Progress has estimated a much higher cost: more than €5 trillion.
