How Trump supercharged the EU’s tech independence push
BRUSSELS — Donald Trump may have finally done what years of warnings from Paris and Brussels could not: Convince Europe’s free-market holdouts that relying on American technology is a vulnerability.
With his threats toward Greenland, sanctions against international officials and willingness to weaponize Europe’s dependence on American firms, the U.S. president has broken down the final bits of resistance to a French-led push to promote European tech companies at the expense of American alternatives.
On Wednesday, the European Commission is set to unveil its so-called tech sovereignty package aimed at reducing reliance on foreign firms. While early drafts obtained by POLITICO suggest Brussels will shy away from forcing a clean break with foreign tech, the momentum behind the push for digital independence is now impossible to ignore.
“People have finally realized that there’s nothing that wields more power than technology,” said Sebastiano Toffaletti, secretary-general at European DIGITAL SME Alliance, a lobby group campaigning to boost alternatives to American tech giants.
“It’s not just a commodity,” Toffaletti added. “It is a way to exert power and influence, and therefore Europe must have its own.”
The package is a culmination of rising unease with the continent’s dependence on American technology, which underlies everything from email communication, the storage and processing of public and private data and many of the tools powering government services.
Only a few years ago, resistance from countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark bogged down a French-led push to keep the EU’s most sensitive data off U.S.-based servers. Critics derided the effort as thinly veiled protectionism that could backfire and harm the European economy.
The first wake-up call came from former U.S. President Joe Biden, who pushed through rules restricting the export of AI chips to some European countries just days before leaving office, recalled Bart Groothuis, a Dutch member of the European Parliament who has admitted to a “huge flip-flop” from his earlier opposition to moving away from American technology.
“It was a clear indication that our great ally was going to colonize us, that we should be completely dependent on American AI,” Groothuis said.
Trump card
Then Trump recognized Europe’s vulnerability, and he pressed it.
His administration’s sanctions against International Criminal Court officials — in response to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister over alleged war crimes in Gaza — revealed the danger of relying on U.S. digital infrastructure.
Top court officials were cut off from widely used U.S. payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard, as well as services including Amazon, Airbnb and Booking.com.
“I live a couple of kilometers away from the International Criminal Court,” Groothuis said. “It was a huge shock.”
But it was Trump’s threats to take over Greenland — an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark — that crystallized the fear among even America’s staunchest allies.
“We used to be one of the member states fighting the most to keep the cloud market open,” said a Danish official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly as the country’s politicians hold talks to form the next government.
“We still are, but the world has unfortunately changed, and we have adapted our position accordingly,” the Danish official said. “The Greenland situation certainly sped things up.”
The change in Copenhagen mirrors a broader shift across Europe. What was once viewed as a French bid to tilt the market toward European providers is now increasingly seen through the lens of security, leverage and geopolitical risk.
There is no “other real source of the problem than Trump, the unpredictability, the threats, the willingness to weaponize” Europe’s dependence on American firms, said Zach Meyers, director of research at think tank CERRE. “The U.S. looks like a more dangerous partner and … the companies involved, to a certain extent, will be subject to the whims of the president.”
Can Europe thank Trump for making the risks of technological dependence impossible to ignore? “Without a doubt,” Dutch lawmaker Groothuis said.
Limits of sovereignty
But the package also exposes the limits of Europe’s newfound consensus. While governments increasingly agree that strategic dependencies pose a risk, they remain split over the right remedy.
Rather than forcing a break with U.S. providers, drafts obtained by POLITICO suggest the Commission will focus on mobilizing private investors, promoting open source alternatives and incentivizing domestic computer chip manufacturing.
Under the proposal, which will now go to national governments and the European Parliament for negotiations, the Commission will require governments to assess potential vulnerabilities. It will also have the power to decide whether a country, such as the U.S., can be trusted to provide technology for the most sensitive sectors of the European economy, two people briefed with the latest details told POLITICO.
But national governments will be largely left to determine how to act to protect themselves from foreign vulnerabilities, leaving them to weigh the risk of antagonizing Washington.
The Commission has trodden carefully in its dealings with the Trump administration, taking pains not to derail a freshly inked trade deal that helped stave off the worst of the U.S. president’s threatened tariffs. It will be careful as it unveils its tech sovereignty package, not to appear to be singling out American companies.
“Technological sovereignty remains grounded in openness, partnership, and fair competition and does not equate isolation, protectionism, or tech decoupling,” the Commission is set to say as it unveils its package, according to the early draft obtained by POLITICO.
The trepidation is evident in other actions the Commission is taking. Even as Brussels prepares to declare tech independence, the Commission is proposing that the EU join Pax Silica, a new U.S.-led club aimed at securing artificial intelligence supply chains, according to an undated preparatory document for a meeting of EU ambassadors Wednesday.
Trump may have given Europe’s tech sovereignty push its momentum. He has also given Brussels every reason to proceed cautiously.
