While European countries have not yet aligned on a common definition of digital sovereignty — something many see as crucial for real progress — there are signs that Paris and Germany are closer on positioning than they were five years ago.
“I admit, I struggled with the term [digital sovereignty] before. I didn’t think it was necessary, but the global situation has changed so dramatically that we Europeans now have to become more sovereign,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday.
At the summit, Merz said, “We’ll explore all the possibilities, together with industry representatives, of what we can do not only to become more independent from China, but also, for example, less dependent on the U.S., less dependent on the Big Tech companies. We want to catch up, we want to improve.”
And yet — with Germany this month celebrating Google’s decision to invest more than €5 billion in building data centers in the country, a move that Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil described as “exactly what we need right now” — the reality of corporate interests may be hard to address.
For Bonfiglio, the lesson from Gaia-X is that ”it is obvious that everybody sitting in the boardroom of an association with such a big and impactful objective tries to protect the interests of their own company.”
While Gaia-X may have missed its shot at delivering on its big, original ambitions, Lechelle insists the upcoming Franco-German summit is “a chance to put a finger on the sore spots.”
In the meantime, “those who wanted to maintain the status quo have won.”