Europe's Digital Independence

Europe has a strong hosting sector, but lacks its own cloud giant. Many core functions of modern cloud platforms are provided by American vendors, making businesses and governments dependent on them for critical systems.

Large-scale AI applications require substantial specialized compute capacity. European capacity is relatively limited, which means that training and running AI models often takes place outside Europe. As a result, the AI value chain remains dependent on non-European platforms.

Europe lacks a widely adopted, integrated suite for email, documents, and collaboration. In practice, many organizations therefore rely on Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. As a result, a critical layer of day-to-day operations remains dependent on non-European suites.

The largest social networks and communication channels in Europe are largely non-European. As a result, public discourse, reach, and communities flow through American and Chinese platforms, shifting control over data, distribution, and moderation to actors outside Europe.