The European Commission has published its long-awaited digital sovereignty package, aiming to reduce the continent’s heavy reliance on US technology giants. The move comes after the Trump administration’s sanctions against Beti Hohler, a Slovenian judge at the International Criminal Court, which cut off her access to US services such as Apple’s app store and Amazon. The case highlights a broader danger: the US could use its technological dominance to exert political pressure on Europe.
At the heart of the package is the Cloud and AI Development Act (Cada), which introduces a ranking system for cloud providers handling public-sector data. Under the scheme, the most sensitive operations would be reserved for providers meeting the highest sovereignty standards, theoretically giving European firms like France’s OVHCloud an advantage over US rivals such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
However, the framework has significant flaws. The strictest assurance level, which would exclude US big tech from bidding, applies only to a narrow segment of public-sector cloud procurement—itself a small fraction of overall European cloud spending. Enforcement is delegated to individual EU governments, many of which may implement the rules weakly to attract US investment or avoid pressure from Washington. This mirrors the underenforcement of the EU’s data protection rules by Ireland, which is financially dependent on big tech.
On artificial intelligence, the Commission’s proposals largely defer to the vision of rapid deployment promoted by US tech firms and the Trump administration, without critically examining the societal and environmental consequences. This stands in contrast to Pope Leo’s recent encyclical, which warns that technological advance without ethical progress may increase means without growth in humanity. The package thus falls short of establishing a distinct European approach to technology.
