After decades of relying heavily on American technology platforms to operate critical infrastructure—from cloud computing to payment systems—the European Parliament has endorsed an ambitious initiative aimed at strengthening Europe’s digital independence.
🌍 The European Parliament has approved the development of EuroStack, a long-term strategic initiative designed to build European-controlled infrastructure across semiconductors, cloud services, software platforms, and artificial intelligence.
📊 Europe’s digital infrastructure remains highly dependent on non-EU providers. Today, more than 80% of the continent’s digital infrastructure relies on foreign technology companies, while Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together control roughly 70% of the European cloud market.
⚖️ Concerns about digital sovereignty have intensified in recent years. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have heightened geopolitical tensions and increased concerns about the security and governance of internal data architectures. As a result, technology vendors such as Microsoft and other global cloud providers are likely to face growing scrutiny from national and regional authorities regarding the management and protection of locally stored private data.
💳 Payment systems illustrate similar structural dependencies. Visa and Mastercard process nearly two-thirds of all card transactions in the Eurozone, leaving many European countries without strong domestic alternatives.
☁️ The EuroStack proposal outlines up to €300 billion in investment by 2035. A key part of the strategy involves redirecting public procurement toward European technology providers in order to stimulate the development of competitive domestic platforms.
🧠 The underlying strategy is straightforward: buy European, build European, and fund European innovation. By leveraging public contracts and investment programs, policymakers aim to shift capital toward European technology ecosystems.
⚙️ At the center of the debate lies the issue of legal sovereignty. Under the U.S. CLOUD Act, American authorities may require U.S.-based technology companies to provide access to data—even when that data is physically stored within European data centers. This legal framework has further strengthened calls within Europe to develop sovereign digital infrastructure.
Source: Europe BANS USA Tech – €300 Billion EuroStack ENDS Dependency, America LOSES Market