Faced with American technological domination, Europe must stop talking and act. Digital sovereignty is played out in the IT choices of companies, not just in regulations.
When Yann LeCun announced that he was raising a billion dollars to develop a new approach to artificial intelligence, European commentators reacted in the same way: they worried about the continent’s delay, called for more investment, and recalled the urgency of digital sovereignty. Then they return to sign their next contracts with AWS, Microsoft Azure or Salesforce. This paradox is at the heart of the European problem. We debate digital sovereignty as a geopolitical issue, even though it is primarily played out in the boardrooms and IT committees of companies across the continent.
Digital sovereignty is not limited to the cloud
Digital sovereignty is often reduced to a question of data localization or sovereign cloud. In reality, it concerns the entire technological value chain. Infrastructure first, with the data centers, networks and computing capacities necessary for artificial intelligence. Then components, including semiconductors and critical materials that power the digital economy. Finally, software, whether business management systems, data platforms or artificial intelligence models.
Today, a large part of these technological building blocks remain dominated by American or Asian players. American hyperscalers occupy a central position in cloud infrastructures, while the most advanced chips are produced mainly in Asia.
In this context, full digital sovereignty is probably a difficult goal to achieve in the short term. But strategic autonomy, based on mastery of critical building blocks, is not only possible but essential. It involves investing in infrastructure, skills and research, but also supporting a European technological ecosystem capable of competing on a global scale.
Champions that already exist
This sovereignty cannot exist without leading European technological players. Europe already has certain assets. SAP structures the management systems of the world’s largest organizations. Mistral builds artificial intelligence models that technically compete with the American giants. Other players, less visible, are developing cloud infrastructures (OVH, Scaleway, etc.), data solutions or cybersecurity tools that have nothing to envy of their competitors across the Atlantic.
The problem is therefore not the absence of European solutions. It is their chronic under-use by European companies themselves which remain the first customers of large American groups, the first users of American SaaS platforms, and the first to consider that “European” still rhymes with “less efficient” or “less mature”.
Regulation, a poorly understood asset
Europe is often criticized for regulating where it should innovate. It’s a false trial. The GDPR, the AI Act, the new digital resilience requirements are not obstacles to innovation, they are standards which define a framework of trust.
The real question is not whether Europe regulates too much, but whether it takes sufficient advantage of this lever. Because a demanding regulatory framework automatically creates an advantage for those players who are natively compliant with it, that is to say, most often, European players. Furthermore, these regulatory frameworks, although criticized during application, are often adopted some time later by other countries. China is the best example with an equivalent of the GDPR (the PIPL) now in force.
Take back control, concretely
Digital sovereignty cannot be decreed in a white paper or a European summit. It is built through concrete decisions: integrating sovereignty criteria into technological calls for tenders, diversifying suppliers (mix of sovereign and international suppliers) rather than consolidating the existing around a single hyperscaler or Cloud host, and above all giving a chance to European solutions with an equivalent functional scope.
This is not protectionism. It’s strategy. In the age of artificial intelligence, the question is no longer just who develops the technologies but who decides to use them. And on this point, European companies still largely have their destiny in hand.
