On Wednesday 3 June, the European Commission unveiled its highly anticipated legislative ‘Tech Sovereignty Package’, with the clear aim of promoting the development and uptake of European solutions in the fields of Cloud, advanced artificial intelligence and semiconductors, while reducing the European Union’s external dependencies in these critical sectors, notably through the use of free and open-source software.
“We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure. This is about protecting our citizens, defending our interests and making our own choices. Europe has the talent, the research excellence, the industrial base and the Single Market. Together, we must turn these strengths into technological sovereignty”, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.
As Agence Europe had previously revealed (see EUROPE 13877/4), the package includes four initiatives: a proposal for a regulation on semiconductors (‘Chips Act 2.0’), a proposal for a regulation on the development of Cloud and artificial intelligence (the ‘Cloud and AI Development Act’), a European strategy for free and open-source software (the ‘Open Source Strategy’), as well as a strategic roadmap on digitalisation and artificial intelligence in the energy sector. The overall aim is to build a genuine “European technology stack”.
“The Union’s tech sovereignty and economic security will depend on its ability to remain at the cutting edge of critical technologies, reduce its exposure to strategic dependencies and avoid creating new dependencies that could be instrumentalised by third countries”, the Commission stresses.
According to the document, the European Union currently spends €264 billion a year, mainly on American IT products and services, a situation which “creates dependencies affecting Europe’s ability to control its essential digital infrastructure, reduce the risks of technological lock-in and guarantee security and compliance”.
The strategy aims in particular to “strengthen European innovation, local industrial capacities and autonomy at every stage of the digital technology value chain, so as to move towards a fully European technology stack”. It also seeks to reduce dependencies, “in particular on a single or limited number of non-European suppliers, notably through trusted clean trade and investment partnerships”, while enabling the European Union to “maintain or regain control of data infrastructure and critical data” and to “play a leading role in shaping international standards for strategic technologies”.
The European Commission estimates that €200 billion will be needed by 2036 to increase the capacities of data centres dedicated to Cloud and artificial intelligence in the European Union, with the bulk of that investment expected to come from the private sector. This would be complemented by €120 billion in public and private investment in the semiconductor industry by 2035, of which roughly €30 billion would be dedicated to developing an advanced European semiconductor fabrication foundry..
In addition, a further €100 billion would be needed to support European leadership initiatives in Cloud and artificial intelligence as well as the deployment of AI factories and gigafactories. €2 billion is intended to be mobilised over the next seven years to implement the open source strategy, while the annual investment gap in the energy sector is estimated at €400 billion. These figures were not included in previous versions of the package.
The future European Competitiveness Fund, which will be set up as part of the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) – and more particularly the component dedicated to digital leadership – will be a central instrument for mobilising the investment needed to achieve the objectives of tech sovereignty.
The European Commission is also calling for “urgent reflection” on ways to “develop the large scale European capacity to finance the Union’s technological ambitions”, notably through the creation of an asset management mechanism tasked with administering a portfolio of strategic investments.
“An initial one-off injection of public capital into this mechanism could be necessary to launch a virtuous circle based on reinvesting the returns generated by successful equity investments”, the document stresses.
The main initiatives of the package. The ‘Chips Act 2.0’ aims to strengthen the European semiconductor ecosystem, improve supply chain resilience, and boost domestic demand for electronic chips (see EUROPE 13880/3).
View the initiative: https://aeur.eu/f/m5j
The ‘Cloud and AI Development Act’ aims to unlock the potential of Europe’s Cloud and artificial intelligence industry, ensuring that these technologies are developed and used in the European Union, while reducing the risks linked to dependence on third countries (see EUROPE 13880/2).
Read the proposal: https://aeur.eu/f/m64
The open source strategy aims to strengthen European technological autonomy across the entire digital stack by relying on free and open-source software, while ensuring an appropriate level of cybersecurity (see EUROPE 13880/2).
Lastly, the ‘strategic roadmap on digitalisation and artificial intelligence in energy sector’ aims to support the supply of secure, clean and competitive energy (see EUROPE 13880/4). It specifically includes a delegated regulation on rating data centres according to their environmental sustainability, which is due to be adopted at a later date, possibly as early as July.
See the roadmap: https://aeur.eu/f/m5w (Original version in French by Ana Pisonero Hernández, with Solenn Paulic and Nadège Guillaume-Delépine)