The EU Just Told Washington It Wants a Divorce — Technologically Speaking

On June 3, the European Commission dropped its formal 'tech sovereignty' package — a sweeping set of proposals aimed at cutting the EU's dependence on foreign, primarily American, technology infrastructure.

The scope is broad. According to Le Monde, the package covers cloud computing, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, data centers, and open-source software. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it plainly: 'We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure.'

The Numbers Behind It

The European Commission itself admits that non-EU companies provide more than 80% of the bloc's digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property, according to Le Monde.

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud alone control roughly 70% of the European cloud market, while European providers hold just 15%, according to research cited by The Conversation.

The EU is estimated to spend €264 billion ($307 billion) annually on U.S. cloud software, per a 2025 report by French consultancy Asteres, as reported by Le Monde. Three hundred billion dollars a year flows from European taxpayers and businesses into American tech companies' coffers.

What the Package Actually Does

Politico EU obtained a draft of the strategy and identified four main pillars:

1. Cloud stress tests. EU member states would be required to assess whether their public administrations are too reliant on foreign cloud providers — testing against EU 'sovereignty criteria.' The catch: the Commission leaves it entirely to each capital to decide what, if anything, to do about the findings. Governments can literally choose to do nothing.

2. A revamped chips law. Brussels wants to push large-scale semiconductor projects with easier public funding access, faster permitting, and preferential treatment. This mirrors the CHIPS Act in the U.S., though it arrives years later and lacks specifics.

3. A new cloud and AI law. This would incentivize construction of data centers inside the EU. The Commission's stated goal, per Le Monde, is to triple EU data center capacity within five to seven years.

4. Open-source software push. The public sector would be nudged — not required — to use open-source tools, reducing vendor lock-in to American platforms.

Why Europe Is Suddenly Serious About This

The push isn't purely ideological. It's driven by real vulnerabilities.

The Conversation points to two recent incidents: an AWS outage in October 2025 that disrupted banking apps globally for hours, and a major Cloudflare incident two months later that knocked LinkedIn, Zoom, and other platforms offline. In April 2025, a Spain-Portugal-France power blackout demonstrated how a grid failure cascades directly into cloud service failures.

There's also the geopolitical dimension. The Trump-era 2018 Cloud Act allows Washington to demand access to data held by U.S.-based cloud providers — regardless of where that data is physically stored. Europe has tracked this legal vulnerability for years.

EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen told journalists that for 'very critical' sectors like defense, it's 'very important' that European companies provide the services, according to Le Monde.

The Enforcement Problem

Much of the coverage misses a crucial limitation. Politico EU is direct about it: the plan 'signals limited ambition in addressing the dominance of American technology head on, instead passing the buck to EU capitals.' The funding from both private sector and EU budget is 'yet to be secured.' This is a framework document, not a transformation.

Another gap: the data center sustainability label that was supposed to accompany this package has been quietly delayed, per two industry representatives briefed on the situation and reported by Politico EU. The dispute centers on nuclear power's role.

What This Means for Different Constituencies

For Europeans: Governments are now acknowledging in writing that critical public services — healthcare records, payment systems, emergency communications — run on infrastructure a foreign government could theoretically cut off. The Swedish city of Helsingborg is already running a year-long simulation of a complete digital shutdown to see what survives, according to The Conversation.

For American tech companies: The EU market is enormous, and Brussels is now explicitly building procurement rules that could sideline U.S. giants from sensitive public contracts. AWS, Microsoft, and Google are watching closely.

For Washington: Weaponizing tech access as a geopolitical lever accelerates decoupling. Every citation of the Cloud Act in Brussels fuels support for homegrown alternatives.

The EU's tech sovereignty package is real. Whether it has real consequences depends entirely on whether member states act on it — and history suggests many won't.