Digital Sovereignty: No! – Yes! – Oh!

Contents

In political circles in Berlin and Brussels, there is regularly a "hot air alarm": buzzwords then fly through the air, supposedly important topics are hyperventilated. Independence, self-sufficiency, sovereignty – these are all words that are meant to sound like strength. And yet they mean weakness. With every change in political personnel, it is noted: we are not independent of others at all.

"Missing Link"

What's missing: In the fast-paced world of technology, we often don't have time to sort through all the news and background information. At the weekend, we want to take this time to follow the side paths away from the current affairs, try out other perspectives and make nuances audible.

• All our the "Missing Links"

Not in semiconductors, not in network equipment, not in energy, not in AI, not in everyday software. Whenever something goes wrong, a drawer for those responsible opens, in which there is a talking point: "It will be a significant task in the coming years to secure our sovereignty through innovation – including and especially our digital sovereignty." This was stated by Friedrich Merz at the Academy of Technical Sciences in October.

Not bad, but also not new

Perhaps not a bad idea, someone just had it before. "We must strengthen our own digital sovereignty, but without cutting global value chains and falling into protectionism ourselves." This was stated by his predecessor Olaf Scholz in 2022 at Republica. In 2021, Ursula von der Leyen wanted to make Europe "fit for the digital age" – and, of course, strengthen digital sovereignty in the process. And Emmanuel Macron stated in 2020: "Europe's freedom of action requires economic and digital sovereignty."

A little earlier, someone else asked: "How can we, so to speak, maintain our digital sovereignty?" It was Angela Merkel. "We have state sovereignty; and we would also like to have digital sovereignty in certain areas. We must acknowledge without envy that in certain areas the world's development is leaving us behind." What she recognized as a challenge – to overcome which would have been the task.

The Louis de Funès Moment

In such moments of clear spontaneous realization by temporarily responsible individuals – Merkel in 2014 following the NSA affair, Macron in his EU military strategy speech in 2020, Scholz following the corona crisis supply chain crisis and Huawei discussions. Merz due to problems with the Trump administration and China – Louis de Funès memes are sent among the employees of deputies and ministries. No! – Yes!- Oh! The original French sequence ("Non! – Si! – Oh!") has, it should be noted, not achieved nearly the same fame as the German dubbing.

It would be wrong to blame politics alone for the situation. Because: the lion's share of excessive dependencies is the responsibility of others, especially the economy. After all, it is their business risk if processes no longer function.

And yet politics sets the rules that must be followed. With the NIS2 implementation finally passed this Thursday for example. With it, far-reaching rules are now finally being introduced on how untrustworthy manufacturers from untrustworthy countries of origin with their untrustworthy products may no longer be used in critical areas. This seems to be a fundamentally great idea. It would have been even better to not have to wait for a small eternity first.

Sum of many individual impacts

And of course, it is incomplete. Because here again, only a part is being addressed. Nowhere is the systematic problem as evident as in the part of the energy sector that is small when viewed individually: electric cars, home storage, inverters, they can all – and often are intended to – be networked. And every single private household with its car, its solar system, its battery storage is legally uncritical. There are no critical components here, even if they all hang on the same update server.

The same applies to software: Of course, Germany's sovereignty is not endangered by the dependence of a single entity on Microsoft software, a specific cloud provider, or a firewall solution. Only the sum of individual impacts constitutes the large-scale, true impact on the sovereignty issue. And many companies don't even have an idea what they are dependent on.

From the perspective of those politically responsible, for example, chip factories would help to become more digitally independent. Experts point to necessary precursor products, specialty chemicals, wafers, lithography machines. And to printed circuit boards, for which the global market is also geographically highly concentrated. Without them, no chip goes into any product.

Four years ago, the Ministry of Economic Affairs published a focus study to better identify critical dependencies. What has actually happened since then?

In fact, US corporations are making great efforts to somehow escape the problem that they want to do good business in Germany and Europe, but at the same time are always subject to US law. Chinese providers assure that they only want to make money and that it would be completely illogical to jeopardize good business through state interests. And German and European companies are happy to conceal that they too are subject to a certain blackmail potential: the China or USA business is of pronounced balance sheet relevance, depending on the industry and company.

Summit without a common goal

In this situation, the federal government is hosting a very special summit on Tuesday: the European Summit on Digital Sovereignty 2025. Launched as a German-French initiative, it is intended as an invitation to other EU member states as well. For Chancellor Friedrich Merz, it is primarily about economic opportunities. For Emmanuel Macron, it is about a Franco-German signal of departure. And German support for tough French interests.

Because when all EU heads of state and government meet, most recently at the end of October, sentences like this emerge: "Given the geopolitical changes, rapid technological change and increasing global competition for innovation, talent and investment, it is crucial to advance the digital transformation in Europe, strengthen its sovereignty, and expand its own open digital ecosystem."

Anchor customers are not enough

That doesn't sound too bad, one might think. But so far, it has only been enough to launch a few flagship projects. An open-source collaboration solution for the administration's workplace is fine, but it no longer impresses everyone on this planet. The geolocated replacement of on-premise data centers with US operating resources for AI clouds will also only advance Germany and Europe at best in specific areas.

What is missing is the brilliant idea of how economies of scale can really be achieved: Where can Europe make itself so much better and indispensable that others will wish for a dependency here? The small, pre-given promise that the state will want to support European companies as an anchor customer in the future is not a sufficient plan. And it is far from being legally secured. But no one would really expect more on the topic from Friedrich Merz.

When French President Emmanuel Macron and the Chancellor pull out their talking points on Tuesday and lament the state of digital sovereignty but promise improvement, what happens from Wednesday onwards will be crucial. If anything happens at all. While the world is becoming increasingly networked and digital, Europe is becoming increasingly dependent. No! – Yes! – Oh!

(vza)