BRUSSELS (ANP/AFP) – Brussels will present a package of new rules for chips, cloud computing, and AI on Wednesday. With this, the European Union aims to become less dependant on countries like the United States for these technologies and “reclaim its place in the global race for geo-economic power.” This emerges from a draught document seen by news agency AFP.
The technological sovereignty package is one of Brussels’ measures to stimulate local production. It includes, among other things, a law intended to accelerate the rollout of data centre infrastructure and a proposal to strengthen the security of supply for chips by reducing dependence on foreign suppliers.
High-ranking EU officials have not specifically mentioned the US. Concerns regarding dependence on American cloud providers have long existed in Europe. They account for about 70 percent of the European market. The bloc fears that President Donald Trump could shut down critical digital infrastructure if tensions between the EU and the US escalate further. The draught further states that governments are expected to conduct “sovereignty risk assessments” for cloud services and AI to “improve resilience” and find European alternatives. According to another document, the European Commission wants the authority to intervene in a crisis by “forcing manufacturers to prioritise orders for ‘crisis-critical’ products, setting aside existing contracts”. It also proposes joint purchasing, which would entail the EU acting as a “central purchaser for Member States facing severe shortages”.
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