The European Commission has adopted a comprehensive set of measures aimed at strengthening the European Union’s digital sovereignty. These measures include:
- The Chips Act 2.0 — Bolsters current European strengths (including mainstream chips) and builds capacity in cutting-edge semiconductor technologies.
- The Cloud and AI Development Act — Reinforces energy-efficient data center capacity, while complementing the Apply AI strategy to boost adoption of artificial intelligence and cloud.
- The EU Open Source Strategy — Places open source at the center of the EU’s technological sovereignty by promoting European open alternatives to non-EU proprietary solutions in critical domains.
- A Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and AI in Energy — Accelerates the rollout of digital solutions and promotes the availability of safe, secure, and sustainable digital energy services.
The EU “currently relies on non-EU countries for over 80% of key digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property,” according to the announcement, and “reducing this dependency is essential for Europe’s economic strength, security, and long-term competitiveness.”
The EU Open Source Strategy specifically aims to support “the development, scaling, deployment and long-term sustainability of open source technologies across both the public and private sectors.” The document acknowledges challenges to implementing these goals, such as difficulties in maintaining and scaling projects, fragmented visibility of European solutions, and limited access to public procurement. However, the strategy also outlines actions to strengthen the open source ecosystem through a full lifecycle approach that:
- Supports contributors, foundations, companies and users
- Enables viable open source business models
- Promotes open source in procurement
- Strengthens the role of open source in standardization and international cooperation
Read more about the EU Open Source Strategy and other pillars of the tech sovereignty package from the European Commission.
