European leaders seek 'digital sovereignty' over tech infrastructure
1 of 3 | Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, unveils the latest RTX 5070 laptop processors on stage during the 2025 International CES at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on January 6. File Photo by James Atoa/UPI | License Photo
June 21 (UPI) -- Leaders of many European nations say they need to do more to develop technological infrastructure to ensure digital sovereignty instead of relying on services from global tech firms.
A recent forum discussion on the market dominance of global corporations assessed the "blurring of the boundaries between economic and political control" among European nations by tech firms.
A consensus of attendees at the ongoing Berlin Summit 2025 agreed European nations need to coordinate their efforts to develop infrastructures to "avoid path dependencies and long-term dependence on global platform players," Forum New Economy reported on Friday.
"European countries are highly dependent on companies from the USA and China in a variety of technological infrastructures, from cloud services and social media to generative artificial intelligence," Forum New Economy reported.
Such companies dominate European markets and are increasing their control of digital infrastructures, innovation networks, supply chains, data flows and research agendas.
An example is Microsoft earlier this year suspending the business email account for International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan.
The action occurred within months of the ICC issuing a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although the tech firm suspended Khan's ICC email account, Microsoft officials said it still is providing services for the ICC.
The company also announced their intent to support the digital sovereignty of European nations.
"We've operated in Europe for more than 40 years, and we have been and always will be a steadfast partner to Europe," Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in a social media post on Friday.
Microsoft is supporting European sovereignty and that of its respective nations with several existing and new tech offerings, Nadella said.
The services include Microsoft Sovereign Cloud, Data Guardian, External Key Management and Sovereign Private Cloud.
The existing and new offerings "bring digital sovereignty to all European organizations" and"unlock new sovereign ways to run private sovereign clouds," Nadella said.
"These new offerings build on decades of pioneering work in sovereign cloud solutions by ourselves and to our partners," he added.
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Trump has bristled at criticism from some of his MAGA faithful, including conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who have suggested that further U.S. involvement would be a betrayal to supporters who were drawn to his promise to end U.S. involvement in expensive and endless wars. Vice President JD Vance in a lengthy posting on X earlier this week defended his boss, while acknowledging that 'people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.' 'But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue,' Vance wrote. He added, 'I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals.' ___ Madhani reported from Morristown, N.J.
