- The EU appears to be concerned about US resilience and technological continuity amid current tensions
- Data center capacity could triple in five to seven years thanks to optimized processes
- The laundering of sovereignty would also be solved with a stricter framework
We already know years of antitrust investigations and strict regulations in the European Union, and critics have argued that the Commission has imposed heavy fines and sanctions on foreign technology providers to promote European technological sovereignty in recent years.
However, now the European Commission has gone a step further and will now actively fund and promote European technological alternatives.
This comes amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears that the United States could restrict or suspend European access to critical digital infrastructure sold by American technology providers.
He Financial times reports on a draft European technology sovereignty strategy, which reveals that the EU wants to “reclaim its place in the global race for geoeconomic power.”
Under the proposal, the Cloud and AI Development Act could triple the capacity of EU data centers in the next five to seven years, focusing mainly on streamlining site selection processes.
Sovereignty risk assessments could also force the bloc’s member governments and other critical industries to identify and assess any hidden dependencies on U.S. software vendors.
Europe also plans to address so-called sovereignty laundering, where big tech companies hide behind European subsidiaries, through a four-step framework that assesses: who ultimately controls the corporate entity; the supply chain; AI model data processing; and location and security of infrastructure.
According to the FOOTthe Commission is framing the changes more as “strategic counterweights that enhance Europe’s ability to remain open to the world without compromising its interests and values,” rather than an exercise in “isolation, protectionism or technological decoupling.”
In early April, CISPE launched its Sovereign and Resilient Cloud Services Framework designed to allow customers to verify the sovereignty and resilience credentials of a cloud service provider.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds.
