The EU27 Telecommunications Ministers said, during their meeting on Tuesday 9 June, that the Tech Sovereignty Package, presented by the European Commission to reduce the Union’s dependence in strategic sectors such as cloud, artificial intelligence and semiconductors (see EUROPE 13880/1), is moving in the right direction. However, discussions are only just beginning and the devil is in the detail.
“We are moving in the right direction. Remaining open to the world does not mean that we should not continue to develop our own capacities”, explained Cyprus’s Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, Nicodemos Damianou, stressing that these were still the “very early stages” of the project.
Germany’s Minister for Digital Transformation, Karsten Wildberger, declared that the Commission package was “clearly moving in the right direction”, while considering that “certain elements” still needed to be refined. He stressed in particular the need for the Cloud and AI Development Act (see EUROPE 13880/2) not to “add an additional layer of bureaucracy” and indicated that Germany and France were “perfectly aligned” on tech sovereignty issues.
“It is always a matter of finding the right balance between supporting European solutions and maintaining international partnerships, which remain essential”, he said, recalling that “market shares are won; they cannot simply be decreed”. He cited in particular the example of Germany’s decision to award two of the largest cloud services contracts to European consortia bringing together SAP Telekom and Schwarz Digits “because they were the most competitive on all criteria”. “We have exceptional companies; we must support them better, but they must continue to operate in a competitive environment”, he added.
“We are very much on the right track to achieving European sovereignty”, said France’s Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence, Anne Le Hénanff, while announcing that France and Germany will jointly present next week their common definition of the criteria applicable to a European sovereign cloud and to European artificial intelligence services at VivaTech, the major trade fair devoted to start-ups, which Paris will host from 17 to 20 June. France wants “to go further”, particularly as regards incentives in public procurement, in order to guarantee a European preference. It also called for the creation of “a common fund” intended to finance the emergence of “European champions”.
“It is positive that the Member States are also working in the same direction, reflecting on how to strengthen our own European technologies and reduce our risky dependencies”, said European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen after the meeting, when asked about any concerns she might have regarding a diverging Franco-German approach. She also said that the package “does not come as a surprise” to the European Union’s international partners.
Poland’s Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs, Dariusz Standerski, stressed the need to preserve a harmonised approach. In his view, all countries should apply “the same standards” in order to ensure that “all assessments are carried out uniformly”.
“We are not going to break off our relations with the United States or with other countries”, said Sweden’s Minister for Public Administration, Erik Slottner. He stated that US companies were “fully aware ” of the concerns expressed in Europe and that they “were looking for solutions to ensure that European data remain in Europe”. In his view, the essential point is that European data “are processed in Europe or under European law”. Moreover, referring to concerns about a possible ‘kill switch’, that is to say the possibility that a foreign government could impose the interruption of a cloud service, Mr Slottner stressed the need to strengthen data portability “so that they are not locked into a single system”, should that system come to be considered insufficiently secure.
Spain’s Minister for Digital Transformation, Óscar López, said that “Europe must find a balance between market freedom and the need to strengthen its sovereignty”. “We do not want to close ourselves off from the world, but we do want to consolidate our European autonomy”, he explained, acknowledging that “many details still remain to be discussed”.
Spain and France welcomed the Commission proposal concerning the future allocation of the 2 GHz frequency band intended for mobile satellite services (see EUROPE 13875/6). (Original version in French by Ana Pisonero Hernández)