The European Union’s (EU) big to cut its dependence on US tech companies is gaining institutional momentum, fresh capital, and a much clearer strategic vocabulary. What the European digital sovereignty still lacks is a coherent map of where its actual assets are located, and a willingness to build from them.
Much of the infrastructure and talent that European digital sovereignty advocates are calling for already exists. The only issue is that it’s simply not where the strategy has historically been looking.
Europe is weighing European digital sovereignty as governments seek control over cloud, AI, and critical infrastructure, reducing reliance on US technology while Eastern Europe’s networks, cybersecurity skills, and Mistral’s open weight AI offer building blocks for independence across the continent.
Dependence to European Control
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM) frames Europe’s technology debate around a basic choice: whether the continent can become digitally sovereign or remain dependent on foreign technology platforms. That question is urgent as cloud computing, AI and digital infrastructure become tied to economic power and security.
The digital sovereignty basics are about control rather than isolation. Governments want authority over data, software, infrastructure, and the rules deciding how critical technology operates.
The observation carries strategic weight that Brussels has been slow to price, as phrased by Mario Draghi’s 2024 competitiveness report, identifying digital autonomy connectivity gaps as a structural weakness in the European economy.
The observation promoted the Commission’s Competitiveness Compass initiative and the Digital Network Act (DNA) – a legislative framework that will reduce telecom market fragmentation and accelerate the fiber and 5G investment across member states.
For Europe, autonomy digital ambitions require alternatives that can compete with services supplied by large US technology companies. European institutions are focusing on local cloud services, open-source software, and infrastructure operating under European law.
This puts digital autonomy at the center of competition over who controls Europe’s technology stack. If governments move public-sector workloads toward local providers, dominant foreign technology companies could lose influence where they have built deep customer dependence.
A shadow of retaliation if Europe digital sovereignty attacked the US through trade pressure or restrictions, demands stronger EU infrastructure that give governments room to enforce their rules without fearing that access to critical foreign technology could suddenly be limited.
Part of that European Union digital sovereignty strategy and into that policy architecture steps Mistral, the Paris-based AI company that Europe digital sovereignty advocates have invested with the expectation of a continental champion.
Eastern Europe and Mistral Fill the Gaps
Mistral closed a $3.48 billion (€3 billion) in a Series D funding round – the largest equity raise ever completed by a European tech company – valuing the French AI company above $24.36 billion (€21 billion).
Samsung Electronics led the round, with EQT’s Scaleup Europe funds, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The company operates across 20 countries, supports more than 125 enterprises clients, including Airbus, ASML, and HSBC, and has committed to building up to one gigawatt of AI computing capacity by 2030.
Mistral says its approach ensures that “customers are never locked into a single vendor’s roadmap, pricing or availability.”
For European digital sovereignty, Mistral’s open-weight approach offers governments and companies an alternative to depending entirely on closed AI systems controlled abroad. Its models can be customized, while organizations can keep sensitive data and workflows within their own environments.
That supports digital autonomy by giving users more control over models, data, compute, and production systems. Mistral describes this as a sovereign AI layer where organizations can decide how systems operate and where information remains.
Europe’s western capital cannot build this system alone. The second article argues that Eastern Europe has infrastructure, cybersecurity knowledge and technical workers that should become central to European digital sovereignty.
Romania, where around nine in ten households now have internet access – 28% increase over the past decade – ranks among the world’s fastest countries for broadband speeds and host the hosts the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre.
In parallel, Estonia has constructed one of Europe’s most sophisticated digital public sectors relative to its population size. Poland, whose autonomy digital economy is valued approximately at around $46.47 billion (€40 billion), has materialized as Central and Eastern Europe’s leading AI hub, deploying domestic AI companies to monitor disinformation and hate speech at national scale.
“Europe’s digital future will not be built exclusively in Western Europe,” wrote Romanian commentator, Cristian Gherasim, in EU Reporter, adding, “it will also be built in Bucharest, Warsaw, Tallinn and across the EU’s eastern frontier.”
The argument behind digital sovereignty Europe is that these countries should not remain on the edge of European technology policy. Bringing their infrastructure, security experience and talent into a unified digital market could help Europe compete with the US and China.
That is where EU digital sovereignty strategic autonomy becomes an infrastructure issue. Fiber, fifth-generation mobile networks (5G), data centers and cybersecurity systems must work across borders if Europe wants a market large enough to support homegrown alternatives.
Still, Europe digital sovereignty depends on more than one AI company or region.
European digital sovereignty needs investment, common rules, stronger infrastructure, and a market where European technologies can scale over time.
The next stage of digital sovereignty Europe will depend on combining Western Europe’s capital and research with Eastern Europe’s networks, security experience and technical workforce. If that happens, European governments and innovators could gain greater control over critical technology while reducing the leverage of dominant foreign providers.
For the continent, European digital sovereignty is less about closing Europe off and more about ensuring it has credible choices. That could determine whether Europe remains mainly a customer of global technology powers or becomes a stronger technology power itself.
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