The European Union has unveiled a package of draft laws designed to wrench control of critical digital infrastructure away from American technology giants, in one of Brussels’ boldest attempts yet to cut its dependence on foreign suppliers.
The European Commission presented its Technological Sovereignty Package, bundling two draft laws — a Chips Act 2.0 and a Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) — with an open-source strategy and a roadmap for digitalising the energy system.
The package set out to reduce the bloc’s reliance on technology from the United States and China, which the Commission said had become a security weakness. It said the EU still depended on non-EU providers for more than 80 per cent of its digital products and services.
At its heart, CADA would create a four-level framework for rating the sovereignty of cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) services. The top two tiers would require that a provider was not controlled by a company or government based outside the bloc.
That condition would in effect rule out US firms, which are subject to the US Cloud Act, allowing American authorities to demand data held by US companies wherever in the world it is stored.
“We want to be sure nobody has a kill switch,” Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen told reporters.
Virkkunen, who holds the tech sovereignty portfolio, conceded it would be hard for American companies to reach the highest levels because powers in the Cloud Act clashed with EU rules.
Three US hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — control more than 70 per cent of the European cloud market, while Europe produces only around 10 per cent of the world’s semiconductors.
The Chips Act 2.0 would oblige national governments to clear planning and environmental approvals for new fabrication plants within 12 months and extend state aid for first-of-a-kind facilities.
The original Chips Act, agreed in 2023, mobilised more than €52 billion but missed its goal of lifting the EU’s share of global chip production to 20 per cent by 2030.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen framed the drive around essential services. “We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure,” she said.
The proposals would have to be approved by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union before becoming law, a process likely to take months.
