EU Digital Sovereignty Package
= " the European Technological Sovereignty Package, a set of measures to strengthen Europe's capacity in semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and open source."
URL = https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1187
"The package includes two legislative proposals - the Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud and AI Development Act - as well as the Open Source Strategy and a Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and AI in Energy."
Description
Max von Thun:
"The European Commission published its highly anticipated digital “sovereignty package” to boost homegrown European technologies and shield the EU from foreign interference. Seen as a whole, last week’s package is a welcome, if belated, recognition that dependence on US tech companies isn’t just an economic problem – it’s a direct threat to the continent’s independence, resilience and security.
Its centrepiece is the Cloud and AI Development Act (Cada), which would create a ranking system for cloud providers handling public-sector data – such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or France’s OVHCloud. In theory, the most sensitive operations and data – particularly those relating to national security and law enforcement – would be reserved for providers that met the highest sovereignty standards, establishing a clear preference for European providers.
While the framework may help shield Europeans from foreign surveillance and give a small boost to European cloud alternatives, it is undermined by some major flaws. For one thing, the strictest assurance level – the only one where US big tech would be banned from bidding for contracts – will only apply to a narrow segment of public-sector cloud procurement, which in turn represents only a small fraction of overall European cloud spending.
Worse still, Cada’s enforcement would be delegated to individual EU governments, many of which have strong incentives to implement the rules weakly in order to attract US tech investment or avoid US government pressure. This would replicate the unfortunate experience of the EU’s data protection rulebook, where Ireland’s financial dependence on big tech’s investments and tax payments has resulted in systematic underenforcement.
The commission’s approach on AI highlights a more fundamental problem. Rather than establish how careful, targeted and evidence-based AI adoption could help the EU achieve its policy objectives while minimising societal harm, Brussels largely defers to the AI vision proposed by US big tech firms and backed by the Trump administration.
According to this vision, AI is an end in itself and the goal is to deploy it as quickly as possible, regardless of the consequences for society and the planet. Contrast this with Pope Leo’s recent encyclical on AI, which states that where “technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity”.