A recent blogpost by the Berlin Global GovTech Centre (background unclear, Capgemini one of only two mentioned “founding members”) laments that “Europe’s digital future (is) caught up in endless definitional loops”, and “debates around the two terms of ‘digital sovereignty’ and ‘Euro Stack’ dominate European policy circles, yet they have become increasingly trapped in endless semantic sparring matches”, so it is time to “cut through the current rhetoric and chart a pragmatic path”.
As EuroStack supporters we have indeed expressed impatience about the endless contemplation and philosophical navel-gazing by the ecosystem of think-tanks, academics and civil society around the topic of digital sovereignty – how we are long on diagnosis and self-pity, while short on “solutions” and “doing”. We also made clear that the version of EuroStack that we stand for (the “Industry Initiative”), is only an industrial policy mission – reversing at least somewhat the decline of Europe’s tech industry in the share of European tech consumption and innovation. Not a semantic question (“what does sovereignty mean?”), not an ethical one, not one about “our democracy” and “our values” (which we care about, but are not the main point). And the reason is fundamentally that we need to maintain and develop capabilities as a Continent in a critical sector (digital technology) where we have lost major ground. That’s it.
Of course Europe let itself fall woefully behind, and it is fragmented, and US digital giants cemented their first-mover advantages with anticompetitive behavior – so finding our way up is hard. And indeed by now we should be past the point of talkshops and roundtables and more blah. But remember, this discussion really did not exist till a year ago and it is remarkable in 11 months it found itself at the top of the policy agenda in so many countries – as well as Brussels. The banging of drums has been necessary – we had years of sole focus on digital regulation sucking all the oxygen out of the debate, and we needed to redirect some of the energy in a different direction.
Where the blog is highly disingenuous is where it dredges up every single straw man anyone can ever think of around the idea of digital sovereignty/EuroStack. It sets up as pillars of the initiative things no one is seriously arguing for. One reads it and repeatedly wonders: why do you fight that point? No one is arguing that. This cannot possibly be in good faith. At the very least it is classic Big Tech proxies’ technique: erect a series of straw men to then knock them down as foolish or unreasonable – making the whole idea look exaggerated, misguided, delusional. But no one is seriously making these points.
Here’s the first canard: “If sovereignty is defined as owning every layer of a technological stack (emphasis added), it can quickly become counterproductive. This leads to fragmented systems, limited interoperability and a retreat from global cooperation”. Let’s cut to the chase: no one is arguing sovereignty should mean “owning every level of the digital stack”. The concern is about local capabilities having withered at multiple stages of the supply chain, and a legitimate aspiration to reverse that decline. This does not mean wholesale replacing what’s there (we can’t), but powering up local assets.
Next: “Europe depends on an accessible and growth-focused transatlantic digital hemisphere. There is no economically viable alternative (…) Furthermore, the establishment of a separate European digital hemisphere (emphasis added) would not be in the interest of European-based global companies. Access to best-in-class digital technologies is absolutely crucial for European companies to grow globally. Making the employment of such technologies more difficult is the opposite of smart industrial policy-making”. But who is advocating any of this? No one is pushing for the creation of a “separate European digital emisphere” – what does that even mean? We are highly reliant on non-European tech today, and that is not going to change any time soon. No one thinks that is the goal.
Then we veer towards the old chestnut: it will cost gazillions! “In the Euro Stack debate, some voices seem to neglect the significant cost of achieving complete digital self-reliance (emphasis added). Creating a separate European IT stack (emphasis added) would be extremely costly — estimates go in the trillions of euros. (…) These investments would necessarily divert capital from other strategic priorities (…) Europe would struggle to fund such investments, and even if this were possible, the opportunity cost of foregoing alternative investments would be substantial”.
This is truly disingenuous. Where to begin? “achieving complete digital self-reliance”? who is arguing for that? Of course, IF anyone was indeed trying to “achieve complete digital self-reliance”, and “create a separate European IT stack”, it would be costly. But again, this is not what anyone is arguing for. This is fantasy.
The blog makes yet more of Big Tech’s classic arguments. For instance, the other old chestnut that we are all in it together, so we should trust US companies to be benevolent and treat us well because it’s in their interest: what we need to do is “optimis(e) for mutual interdependence, where both sides of the Atlantic have strong incentives to cooperate, and the cost of decoupling is too high for either to bear (emphasis added)” – Decoupling? Says who? No one with any sense argues for this. We will remain intertwined. But we should have more choice and more optionality.
Next straw man: ”Digital ecosystems do not emerge from top-down engineering or pristine stack diagrams (emphasis added). They evolve from real-world, user-driven needs: a messy, iterative process grounded in solving specific problems. (…) Amazon did not start by building its cloud service AWS — it began by selling books online. The infrastructure came much later, shaped by real commercial demand. (…) Rather than building abstract infrastructure in search of applications (emphasis added), we should focus on solving real problems for users and businesses”. Again trying to beat at something no one is pushing for. The EuroStack Industry Initiative is certainly not pushing “top down engineering” nor relying on “pristine stack diagrams”. Indeed we have argued against a “top down” approach in which the future of the digital industry should be designed top down, by some regulator. And who is “building abstract infrastructure in search of applications”? The real issue is how can European suppliers meet the demand for services that European customers need? This involves the supply side providing indeed products customers want to buy, not “abstract infrastructure”.
The discussion of the role of public procurement is also disingenuous: no one is saying public procurement must shift 100% of public sector demand to European suppliers; but that digital purchases by the public sector each year are chunky, and redirecting a share of that spend towards European suppliers would be a major benefit to European industry. Of course, cost considerations must continue to play a part – the idea is not “buy European whatever the cost”. The shift would be gradual, and modest – perhaps 20-30% of annual spend. We have made this very clear in every position paper and talk we give. Yet the blog admonishes: “Public sector procurement cannot become a playground for digital sovereignty … procurement alone cannot — and should not — carry the full weight of a country’s digital strategy”. How boring. No one says this. And indeed we agree with an approach that “involves creating tenders that ask for modular, multi-vendor systems in which critical components, such as chips, cloud services and software, are considered replaceable commodities rather than permanent dependencies. The goal is strategic flexibility, not self-sufficiency for its own sake”. Yes, quite. But this means European supply must go from the current “nowhere” to “somewhere”. That’s what we are saying.
Same is true for Open Source: “open source is not a silver bullet. (…) It is common sense that some layers of the technology stack should be open source (…) However, insisting that open source solutions deserve preferential treatment simply because they are open misses the point. (…) What is often lacking is a clear-eyed, comparative view. What is the actual total cost of ownership at feature parity? Which option delivers the best long-term value for the public sector? This is not about being for or against open source. It is about intellectual honesty and focusing on outcomes rather than slogans”. Agree with this, but you are erecting a straw man we are not pursuing.
Finally, the geopolitical canard: “The idea that the US political leadership could suddenly force American tech companies to shut down services for European clients — the so-called ‘kill switch’ — is largely a doomsday scenario used for rhetorical effect. Such an action would represent a severe breakdown in transatlantic relations, bordering on economic warfare. Disabling digital services used by public administrations or critical infrastructure would be considered an act of aggression and would almost certainly provoke retaliation by European governments. Such counter-measures would inflict crippling economic pain on both sides — just imagine European business software would be ‘kill switched’ in the US”. Where to begin with this. Of course the ‘kill switch’ is not about the US political leadership suddenly requesting US tech companies to make all of Europe “go dark”. No one is suggesting this, again. The reference to “kill” is just to the potential for one, two, more services being disabled or degraded. Not all at once, but in ways that can inconvenience and inflict harm to European stakeholders. It’s about agency: customers can be deprived of functionalities and the decision lies completely outside of European hands. In a world where it is obvious that digital regulation is being explicitly demised in exchange for better trade terms, this lack of agency is problematic. Can Europe retaliate and disable SAP in the US? We know where SAP stands: with Big Tech. Come on, we know what the appetite for retaliation is. We need at least some alternatives.
Overall, the Berlin blogpost pretends to be the voice of reason – calm, collected, rational – against the irrational, delusional, hyperbolic, wooden, backward-looking, fantasyland approach of those arguing for “digital sovereignty” or “EuroStack”. In reality every single one of the propositions the blog attributes to our camp are gratuitously exaggerated and do not represent what supporters are saying. The stance is more subtle, more nuanced, less dogmatic; the goal is not to decouple from or extirpate US tech, but to reverse at least in part the decline of European industrial capabilities in digital, and create a larger role for European suppliers in serving European demand, with products that are attractive and competitive. Thus increasing competition for European demand, not reducing it.
The cause of the European digital industry is not helped by semantic discussions, theoretical debates, more workshops and roundtables. But it is also not helped by rehashing Big Tech’s talking points and dressing them up as the constructive, responsible European voice. We know whose voice we are really hearing here.