In an open letter sent to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, a broad coalition of players from the ranks of the European technology industry calls on the EU to take “radical measures” to reduce its dependence on foreign infrastructure and services, and to create a “sovereign infrastructure fund” to increase public investment in cutting-edge technologies.
The letter, dated Friday 14 March and seen by Reuters, includes signatories such as Airbus, Dassault Systems, OVH Cloud and Ecosia.
In their view, “Europe must regain the initiative and become more technologically independent at all levels of its essential digital infrastructure: from the logical infrastructure - applications, platforms, media, frameworks and AI models - to the physical infrastructure - chips, computing, storage and connectivity”.
They believe that Europe’s current external dependence “creates risks for security and reliability, compromises [its] sovereignty and hampers [its] growth”.
They suggest the introduction of a genuine “European purchasing” policy in calls for tender to stimulate demand and encourage national investment: “The aim is not to exclude non-European players, but to create a space where European suppliers can legitimately compete (and justify the investment)”, they state.
According to the signatories, at the current rate of progress, Europe will be almost entirely dependent on non-European technologies within three years. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)