EU seeks to scale back its dependence on Huge Tech corporations, construct its personal digital platforms, chat apps, and pc software program, and reduce dangers which will come up from geopolitical incidents
Think about the web all of the sudden stops working. Cost techniques in your native meals retailer go down. Healthcare techniques within the regional hospital flatline. Your work software program instruments, and all the data they include, disappear.
You attain out for info however battle to speak with household and buddies, or to get the newest updates on what is going on, as social media platforms are all down. Simply as somebody can pull the plug in your pc, it’s attainable to close down the system it connects to.
This isn’t an outlandish state of affairs. Technical failures, cyber-attacks and pure disasters can all deliver down key elements of the web. And because the US authorities makes rising calls for of European leaders, it’s attainable to think about Europe shedding entry to the digital infrastructure offered by US corporations as a part of the geopolitical bargaining course of.
On the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland, the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, has highlighted the “structural crucial” for Europe to “construct a brand new type of independence” — together with in its technological capability and safety. And, actually, strikes are already being made throughout the continent to begin regaining some independence from US know-how.
A small variety of US-headquartered Huge Tech firms now management a big proportion of the world’s cloud computing infrastructure, that’s the world community of distant servers that retailer, handle and course of all our apps and information. Amazon Internet Providers (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are reported to carry about 70% of the European market, whereas European cloud suppliers have solely 15%.
My analysis helps the concept that counting on a couple of world suppliers will increase vulnerabilty for Europe’s non-public and public sectors — together with the chance of cloud computing disruption, whether or not attributable to technical points, geopolitical disputes or malicious exercise.
Two latest examples — each the results of obvious technical failures — have been the hours‑lengthy AWS incident in October 2025, which disrupted hundreds of companies akin to banking apps the world over, and the foremost Cloudflare incident two months later, which took LinkedIn, Zoom and different communication platforms offline.
The influence of a significant energy disruption on cloud computing companies was additionally demonstrated when Spain, Portugal and a few of south-west France endured a huge energy minimize in April 2025.
What occurs in a digital blackout?
There are indicators that Europe is beginning to take the necessity for larger digital independence extra critically. Within the Swedish coastal metropolis of Helsingborg, for instance, a one-year undertaking is testing how numerous public companies would operate within the state of affairs of a digital blackout.
Would aged individuals nonetheless obtain their medical prescriptions? Can social companies proceed to supply care and advantages to all town’s residents?
This pioneering undertaking seeks to quantify the total vary of human, technical and authorized challenges {that a} collapse of technical companies would create, and to grasp what stage of threat is suitable in every sector. The purpose is to construct a mannequin of disaster preparedness that may be shared with different municipalities and areas later this 12 months.
Elsewhere in Europe, different forerunners are taking motion to strengthen their digital sovereignty by weaning themselves off reliance on world Huge Tech firms — partly via collaboration and adoption of open supply software program. This know-how is handled as a digital public good that may be moved between completely different clouds and operated underneath sovereign circumstances.
In northern Germany, the state of Schleswig-Holstein has made maybe the clearest break with digital dependency. The state authorities has changed most of its Microsoft-powered pc techniques with open-source alternate options, cancelling practically 70% of its licenses. Its goal is to make use of Huge Tech companies solely in distinctive circumstances by the top of the last decade.
Throughout France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, governments are investing each nationally and transnationally within the improvement of digital open-source platforms and instruments for chat, video and doc administration — akin to digital Lego bricks that administrations can host on their very own phrases.
In Sweden, a related system for chat, video and on-line collaboration, developed by the Nationwide Insurance coverage Company, runs in home information facilities slightly than overseas clouds. It’s being supplied as a service for Swedish public authorities in search of sovereign digital alternate options.
Your selections matter
For Europe — and any nation — to meaningfully deal with the dangers posed by digital blackout and cloud collapse, digital infrastructure must be handled with the identical seriousness as bodily infrastructure akin to ports, roads and energy grids.
Management, upkeep and disaster preparedness of digital infrastructure needs to be seen as core public obligations, slightly than one thing to be outsourced to world Huge Tech corporations, open for overseas affect.
To encourage larger give attention to digital resilience amongst its member states, the EU has developed a cloud sovereignty framework to information procurement of cloud companies — with the intention of preserving European information underneath European management. The upcoming Cloud and AI Growth Act is anticipated to deliver extra focus and sources to this space.
Governments and personal firms needs to be inspired to demand safety, openness and interoperability when searching for bids for provision of their cloud companies — not merely low costs. However in the identical manner, as people, we will all make a distinction with the alternatives we make.
Simply because it’s advisable to make sure your personal entry to meals, water and drugs in a time of disaster, be conscious of what companies you utilize personally and professionally. Contemplate the place your emails, private pictures and conversations are saved. Who can entry and use your information, and underneath what circumstances? How simply can all the things be backed up, retrieved and transferred to a different service?
No nation, not to mention continent, will ever be fully digitally unbiased, and nor ought to they be. However by pulling collectively, Europe can guarantee its digital techniques stay accessible even in a disaster — simply as is anticipated from its bodily infrastructure. – Rappler.com
This story initially appeared on The Dialog.
Johan Linaker, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Laptop Science, Lund College
