New geopolitical realities also call for new strategies for tech sovereignty: The EU’s digital strategy links its own competitiveness and autonomy with new international partnerships.
Germany’s digital sovereignty has been at stake for some time now, yet it remains unsecured to this day. Huawei components in German 5G networks have long been regarded as a security risk, but are only now due to be removed from the core networks where sensitive data flows converge. The desire for home-grown cloud solutions has also existed for a long time, and yet Amazon, Google and Microsoft dominate the German and European markets. Germany is by no means an isolated case – neither within the EU nor, certainly, in the rest of the world. The dominance of Chinese and US technology makes it difficult for other countries to declare their independence.
But, as policymakers, business leaders and activists in Berlin and Brussels believe, this must change – at the latest since the second Trump administration began exploiting its own tech companies to blackmail even its allies. If Germany and the EU want to hold their own digitally, they need their own solutions or well-integrated alternatives. The “Germany Stack”, the planned national platform for digital administration, must be capable of integrating into the “Eurostack”. This is the vision of an EU that is sovereign at all levels of digital infrastructure – from raw materials and infrastructure to future technologies and data. All of this, in turn, is intended to culminate in an “EU Tech Business Offer” – this is how the EU’s International Digital Strategy describes Europe’s industrial offering to the rest of the world. The EU Digital Strategy links competitive goals with cooperation through a tech offering that develops open business models together with partners in the Global South.
And so a race to catch up has begun – from AI factories to language models, as well as communication and cloud services. The European Commission intends to present a legislative package on technological sovereignty in 2026, aimed at reducing critical dependencies. But the EU cannot close all the gaps in its tech stack on its own. It needs access to raw materials, it lags far behind in semiconductor production, and its companies cannot compete with the integrated software, cloud and platform empires of the ‘hyperscalers’ (major US tech conglomerates). For mobile networks, at least, there are European alternatives in the form of Nokia and Ericsson. Europe can build submarine cables and satellites and boasts cutting-edge research ranging from AI to quantum computing. Countries such as Germany excel in industrial digitalisation and Earth observation, as well as in digital services and infrastructures for identity management or payment transactions, which offer a high level of data protection and IT security.
Europe’s offer to partners
The ‘EU Tech Business Offer’, which brings these strengths together, is to be developed as part of the Global Gateway Initiative – the EU’s response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the ‘Digital Silk Road’ it encompasses. Since 2021, more than 250 ‘flagship projects’ in the fields of energy, transport, digitalisation, education and health have been funded under the Global Gateway label. According to the Commission, this has mobilised investments totalling more than €300 billion. The focus is on Africa and the Middle East, but there are also Global Gateway projects in Asia and Latin America, as well as in the EU’s eastern neighbours and in Central Asia.
In its International Digital Strategy, the EU makes it clear that its digital cooperation is intended to serve not only development goals but also strategic and economic interests. It is therefore seeking a new kind of partnership. The private sector is to be more closely involved; EU Member States are to coordinate more closely; and, alongside development loans, export promotion is also desired. With the ‘Tech Business Offer’, the EU is also making a virtue of the necessity of shrinking development budgets. In the current global situation, it is also banking on its ability to cater to the interest in geostrategic diversification.
“[The EU] has the capacity to provide integrated technology solutions to partner countries seeking to uphold their digital sovereignty and to implement a human-centric digital transformation”, states the International Digital Strategy. This strategy is based on a triad of competitiveness, security and social values. This corresponds to the three pillars on which digital sovereignty should rest, according to German expert Julia Pohle: the economy, the state and society.
The path to a stable, reciprocal sovereignty commitment
However, if the reciprocal sovereignty commitment is to have a stable foundation that strengthens Europe’s digital sovereignty internally whilst simultaneously establishing new, stable and mutually beneficial partnerships, the following must not happen:
Firstly, the EU’s competitiveness must not be built at the expense of partner countries, nor must it lead to ‘digital colonialism’. Such an approach would create new (digital) dependencies rather than partnerships. In a resolution adopted in March 2026, the European Parliament criticised the lack of transparency in the selection of Global Gateway projects. Democratic oversight is particularly important in the raw materials and energy sectors, which are intended to safeguard Europe’s digital sovereignty, but which may pose risks to people and the environment. An EU raw materials partnership with Rwanda has been criticised for potentially fuelling the conflict with the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. A report by the civil society alliance Eurodad highlights that a number of hydrogen projects under the Global Gateway are located in countries facing water shortages. Digital projects, which account for around 13 per cent of all Global Gateway investments, have so far been less frequently at the centre of such controversies. A common criticism, however, is that investments by European telecommunications groups (such as Nokia, Ericsson or Orange) have often been concentrated in urban centres, which does not help to bridge the ‘digital divide’ with rural regions. The Eurodad study also highlights the environmental risks posed by data centres. European firms are not leaders in this field, but are seeking to enter the market for energy and electricity solutions that can lead to greater efficiency. However, if they merely become suppliers for US Big Tech projects, this offers no gains in sovereignty.
Secondly, pragmatic partnerships must not undermine the ’human-centric approach’, which the EU regards as its guiding principle. This approach, which the EU champions internally, must also be upheld externally in order to maintain credibility and develop genuinely sovereign digital solutions. This includes meaningful engagement with civil society, as called for in the Parliament’s resolution. It also entails clear red lines, for instance where there is a risk that a digital identity project could be misused for surveillance or discrimination. In this context, the EU should also review its own stance on digital rights – internally during negotiations on relaxing digital regulation, and externally regarding the use of digital surveillance at its external borders.
Every initiative should therefore be underpinned by the question of which problems digitalisation is intended to solve, and what kind of digitalisation is desirable. A narrowly defined risk assessment based on the principle of ‘do no harm’ often does not go far enough. A positive proposal that has a genuine impact whilst upholding the human-centric approach should include the following elements:
- Genuine gains in sovereignty through operational control. It is not enough for Europe to supply the engineering technology for projects over which US hyperscalers have operational control. European companies are right to see a market for sovereign cloud solutions or satellite communications where data does not flow to third parties. Public funding must keep such objectives in mind so that it does not become merely a means of promoting exports.
- Smaller is often more sustainable. Europe has the opportunity to become a pioneer in sustainable digitalisation and thus develop a unique selling point that neither US hyperscalers nor Chinese providers offer. Regions with fewer resources need solutions that are financially viable in the long term and do not place an undue burden on the environment: These could be digital public services based on open-source technology that do not incur high licensing costs. The global GovStack project, in which Germany is also involved, offers building blocks for such systems. The future also lies in efficient AI or cloud solutions that do not rely on large data centres and high computing power. Flexible financing models would help small businesses and NGOs in particular to participate in such projects.
- Local knowledge is key. Local problems often require local solutions, for example in AI applications for agriculture, where Western language models perform less well due to a lack of local training data, as they fail to recognise crops or farming methods. A strategy aimed at delivering real impact makes EU public funding accessible to businesses and civil society organisations from partner countries as well; without major bureaucratic hurdles and without restricting the definition of a ‘local company’ to subsidiaries of European corporations.
- Openness benefits all sides. Partnerships based on mutual gains in sovereignty require genuine exchange, not just one-way technology transfer. Innovative EU projects give partners access to Copernicus Earth observation data or reserve exclusive capacity on deep-sea cables for regional research institutions. This also includes a modern visa policy for students and skilled workers – because openness does not end with digital infrastructure.
The geopolitical situation is creating a sense of urgency
Achieving these goals requires a comprehensive concept of sovereignty that encompasses all three pillars. In her speech at the 2019 Internet Governance Forum in Berlin, former Chancellor Angela Merkel placed individual and societal self-determination at the heart of this concept. At a time when the geostrategic debate is becoming even more intense, it is worth bearing this definition in mind.
The geopolitical situation is creating new pressure to act: With the second Trump administration, the transatlantic tech partner of recent decades has been lost. This is not a temporary disruption, but a structural shift. Germany and the EU face the task of realigning their digital strategy – and quickly. Those who act now can help shape which technological standards and values apply globally.
A German strategy must be embedded within a European framework and also requires partnerships with established democracies as well as with new partners in the Global South – something that Germany and the EU are already doing through digital dialogues with a range of countries and regions. Right now, however, the EU must also focus on developing new business models, together with international partners, that offer human-centric and resource-efficient alternatives to the tech authoritarianism of overpowered states and companies. This applies all the more to democracies, which must also prioritise pluralism and cooperation even in the tension between security and competition. The four guiding principles outlined in this text point the way towards the implementation of the European digital strategy: towards greater digital sovereignty in Europe and towards cooperation that gives partners in the Global South genuine capacity to act.
This piece was first published in German on boell.de.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue.
