Last week, the European Union took two important steps in shaping its digital policy. On June 5th, the European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy published the EU’s new International Digital Strategy, setting out a vision for the EU as a trusted global digital partner.
Just two days earlier, the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) adopted the own-initiative (INI) report on technological sovereignty and digital infrastructure—though through an unusual process. Rather than allowing the report to proceed on the basis of the draft prepared by Sarah Knafo,a member of the far-right French party “Reconquête!, four major political groups—the European People’s Party (EPP), Socialists and Democrats (S&D), Renew Europe, and the Greens/EFA—came together to replace the original text with their own version.
While the two documents address different dimensions of EU digital policy, one external engagement, the other internal capacity, they respond to a shared concern: the EU’s structural dependence on foreign, mostly US and Chinese, technologies. Often framed as a matter of competitiveness, the deeper concern is digital sovereignty and resilience in the systems that underpin Europe’s economy, public services, and democratic life.
Sovereignty Begins with Infrastructure
The Parliament’s INI report recognizes that Europe cannot afford to base its digital economy on infrastructures it does not control. It calls on the Commission to:
develop [a] comprehensive policy with the aim of reducing harmful strategic dependencies, strengthening domestic value chains, and ensuring a secure, trustworthy, and innovation-driven digital ecosystem that adhere to European values
The dependencies across the digital technology stack are not just technical, they are political. They expose the EU to extraterritorial legislation, such as the US CLOUD Act, which allows American authorities to access data stored by US companies, even when that data is hosted on European soil. They limit the EU’s ability to enforce its own rules— companies such as Meta and X have repeatedly pushed back on transparency and moderation requirements, and in some cases have refused to operate in the EU market rather than comply. The dependencies leave the Union vulnerable to disturbances in global supply chains, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and the semiconductor shortages that followed, or US export controls targeting chipmaking equipment.
This is what makes the report significant. While not legally binding, it plays a clear agenda-setting role by expressing the European Parliament’s political consensus on digital sovereignty. It sends a strong signal to the Commission ahead of key legislative and budgetary decisions. At its core, the report calls for the development of sovereign digital infrastructures that include everything from semiconductors and connectivity solutions to cloud infrastructure, software, and artificial intelligence systems—often referred to as the Eurostack in recent discussions.
Beyond Regulation and Market Fixing: Building Public Interest Alternatives
The EU has earned a global reputation for regulating digital markets. But regulation alone cannot rebalance power in a system where core infrastructure is controlled by a few dominant, non-EU companies whose business models rely on (data) extraction and surveillance. In the absence of credible alternatives, both public institutions and citizens remain dependent on systems that do not respect fundamental rights.
The INI report addresses this challenge directly, calling for the creation of a foundational layer of digital public infrastructure. This foundational layer is essential for advancing technological sovereignty and enabling a more open and competitive digital market. It should be grounded in open standards, promote interoperability, and be designed with privacy, security, and public accountability by default.
Crucially, the report recognises that the forthcoming Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) must reflect this strategic priority. It calls for increased EU-level investment in digital sovereignty, including a “dedicated envelope for the development and deployment of digital public infrastructure” in areas where European coordination brings the most added value.
Europe already has small-scale initiatives that point in the right direction, such as open-source investments under the Next Generation Internet (NGI). But these efforts remain scattered, short-term, and underfunded. What is needed instead is a coordinated, long-term effort, with dedicated budgets, and institutional anchoring. The report also highlights the need to leverage public procurement to scale open and interoperable solutions.
However, the report stops short of a key recognition: that public investment must not only support innovation or correct market failures, but also create alternatives where exploitative models have become entrenched. This is particularly urgent in areas such as social networking protocols and algorithms, and public communication layers, where current infrastructures and their business models are structurally misaligned with democratic values and subject to harmful business incentives. If the EU is serious about reshaping the digital landscape, it must invest in building shared, rights-aligned alternatives. It must not only fix what is broken, but also establish a foundation that is governed in the public interest from the start.
Connecting the Dots: Aligning External and Internal Strategy
The EU’s new International Digital Strategy positions digital infrastructure, governance, and innovation as key pillars of its external action. The strategy focuses on partnership-building, standard-setting, and secure connectivity. It highlights four main directions: deepening digital partnerships, expanding trade and regulatory cooperation, building interconnected networks of agreements, and strengthening defence-related technological cooperation. It reaffirms the EU’s preference for multilateralism and open standards over unilateral dominance or decoupling. This is an ambitious vision, but if the EU wants to be a credible actor globally, it should first ensure that its internal digital capacities reflect the same priorities.
This means that the EU cannot credibly promote digital public infrastructure in the Global South without first establishing a functioning, open base layer of such infrastructure across the European single market. It also cannot credibly advance algorithmic transparency internationally while continuing to depend on platforms that resist compliance with its own regulatory standards in the area. Nor can it convincingly champion trustworthy AI internationally while deploying opaque, proprietary systems at home.
What Needs to Happen Now
The next few years will be a test of the EU’s commitment to digital sovereignty. If the Union is serious about regaining control of its digital present and future, it must support its ambitions with substantial and sustained public investment in digital infrastructure, and it must start doing so now.
This means supporting the core independent capabilities that Europe currently lacks, such as interoperable cloud infrastructure, privacy-preserving collaboration tools, and open protocols for social networking. These systems must be enabled by governance structures that protect the public interest and prevent the concentration of power. The key here will be to mobilize resources from the existing Research and Innovation funding programmes of the EU, such as Horizon Europe and Digital Europe, within a logic that is geared towards infrastructure investment and maintenance. An important role could be played by the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium for Digital Commons which is championed by France, Germany, and the Netherlands. This EDIC could provide permanent institutional homes for critical projects, ensuring continuity, scale, and democratic oversight.
Without proper governance structures, public investments risk having little impact and scale, and replicating the extractive models the EU seeks to move away from. This is also why digital commons (shared, open systems governed collectively) offer a promising, “third”, way between commercial monopoly and state infrastructure. This approach has the potential to embed values such as decentralization, transparency, and accountability into the design and operation of digital systems and can act as durable alternatives to dominant platforms. Public procurement should also be used far more strategically. It remains one of the most powerful tools the EU and Member States have to shape (not fix!) markets. In addition, procurement frameworks must be reformed to support open, rights-aligned solutions. At the international level, the EU should deepen cooperation with partners who share this vision. But partnership must be built from a position of autonomy, not dependency or power.
From Vision to Infrastructure
What Europe needs now is the infrastructure that gives it room to act autonomously, to govern on its own terms, and to offer its citizens and businesses alternatives to systems that extract and lock in. Just as importantly, it needs the political will to invest in that future.
In the short term, the European Commission must mobilise funding through existing programmes, prioritising open and secure infrastructure in new initiatives, and accelerating procurement reform. In the longer term, Member States, Parliament, and the Commission must ensure that the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) includes a dedicated budget for digital sovereignty and that upcoming legislation reinforces public access, ownership, and function over critical infrastructure. In doing so, the EU can draw from national models, such as the German Sovereign Tech Agency.
Few in Europe seriously advocate full decoupling from U.S. digital technologies. What they call for is more realistic and more urgent: a self-determined digital landscape in which cooperation with partners is built on mutual capability, not one-sided dependency. Last week’s vote and publication are a welcome signal of intent. But without sustained political commitment and investment in the next budget cycle, digital sovereignty will remain a declaration instead of becoming a reality.
