The intervention at the event — titled Europe’s race for digital leadership — comes at a particularly sensitive time in transatlantic relations, after U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take over Greenland forced European politicians to consider retaliation.
Virkkunen declined to single out the United States as one of the partners that the EU must de-risk from. She pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as incidents that point to Europe’s “vulnerabilities.”
She said the U.S. is a key partner, but also noted that “it’s very important for our competitiveness and for our security, that we have also our own capacity, that we are not dependent.”
The Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty swung behind the idea of using public contracts as a way to support the development of European technology companies and products.
“We should use public procurement, of course, much more actively also to boost our own growing technologies in the European Union,” she said when asked about her stance on plans to “Buy European.”
Those plans, being pushed by the French EU commissioner Stéphane Séjourné, in charge of European industy, to ensure that billions in procurement contracts flow to EU businesses, are due to be outlined in an upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act that has been delayed multiple times.