Big tech dependency: Trump as a booster for digital sovereignty in the EU?

“Sovereignty has never been more important than it is today,” says Würzburg computer science professor Harald Wehnes regarding the greater independence of software and other technologies from market-dominating giants, especially from the USA such as Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google, which politicians have been striving for years. “Everyone should have heard the shots,” emphasizes the scientist, referring to the line taken by the new US government under Donald Trump, who sees Europe as a digital colony at best.

However, digital sovereignty has not only been an issue for Wehnes since Trump 2. Big tech created a kind of kill switch years ago, complains the member of the German Informatics Society (GI). This means that functions of IT products from US companies can simply be switched off at any time. In addition, there were “false promises” and traps. Microsoft & Co. engage in “sovereignty washing”, giving themselves the appearance of greater independence with solutions hosted in Europe, for example for cloud services. Those who use such services not only lose sovereignty over their data, but also pay a lot for it.

At a virtual round table hosted by Nextcloud, Wehnes described the constantly rising license prices, particularly for Microsoft products, as a form of tax that would ultimately destroy the European economy and society. He is therefore calling for tariffs of ten to 20 percent on software and services that do not come from Europe: “We need disruptive solutions like in the USA”, where Trump is threatening to impose tariffs on the EU, for example. The member states should use the revenue to finance open-source alternatives.

EuroStack estimated at 300 billion euros

Sebastian Raible from the European Open-Source Software Business Association (Apell) was skeptical about calls for tariffs, saying that he would prefer international trade without barriers: “We also want to do business in the USA.” However, a new trade war is obviously needed “to show us how much these dependencies are costing us”. The EU urgently needs to invest significantly more in apps, IT services and capacities. Open source as a “public good” is of strategic importance for this. He welcomed the proposal for a EuroStack made by an international team of experts led by innovation economist Francesca Bria. According to the proposal, the EU should invest around 300 billion euros in common platforms, data spaces, standards and coordinated strategies by 2035 and adopt a “Europe first” mandate.

“We need to take serious steps towards alternative software,” also postulates Hans-Joachim Popp from the German Association of IT Users Voice. This is due to the “political situation”: “Otherwise we will no longer be able to operate our systems.” As a first step, de facto standard products such as Word, Excel & Co. should therefore be mapped in alternative products and then further developed into “better solutions”. Converters should be built for special file formats “that work for 99.9 percent of cases”. Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) alone is not enough.

Open-source obligation for critical infrastructures

Meanwhile, Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek can no longer hear the narrative introduced into the debate by US giants that Europe cannot do tech. It leads to European IT companies being overlooked and remaining underfunded. This in turn increases the dependency on big tech in Europe, while the potential of local innovations is ignored. US Vice President JD Vance is also spreading the myth that Europe can only buy IT solutions but cannot contribute anything decisive. In fact, the United States secured access to data in the cloud worldwide with the Cloud Act, as long as US companies are somehow involved. This also applies to the Delos Cloud, in which Microsoft is cooperating with SAP and Arvato. The US government could also order the Redmond-based giant to stop providing updates for the underlying software.

Karlitschek also considers the claim that hyperscalers from the USA scale better and are cheaper than European computer clouds to be nonsense. OHV or Hetzner, for example, are usually cheaper and just as powerful. Nextcloud works primarily with Deutsche Telekom's open cloud, which works well. With Hub 10, the Stuttgart-based company now wants to market a European open-source alternative to Microsoft 365, including an AI chatbot and agent support. According to the manager, a complaint against the Windows and Office manufacturer is also being filed with the German Federal Cartel Office for illegal bundling, which is likely to be decided soon.

Karlitschek advises the EU Commission to impose a requirement that 50 percent of software in the area of critical infrastructures should be based on open source. This would lead to an enormous increase in start-ups and organizations in this sector, while the hyperscalers have so far had nothing to offer in this area. CDU leader and chancellor aspirant Friedrich Merz declared in the Berlin round on Sunday that it would be an absolute priority for him to “strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can achieve real independence from the USA step by step”.

(mki)