Article by Paula Oliver Llorente: “Since the appointment of the European Commission’s first Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy on 1 December 2024, technological sovereignty has become a fashionable term in the corridors of Brussels, Berlin, Paris and every other European capital, including Madrid. Yet this has happened without a clear definition of the concept.
Despite this shortcoming, the European Commission has sought to give the concept substance and meaning through accomplished facts. Just a few weeks before the summer, it unveiled its long-awaited technological sovereignty package, which, in simplified terms, understands technological sovereignty as possessing the digital capabilities needed for our society to function while minimising strategic dependencies and the risks of external interference. The package was necessary and includes highly relevant measures for the Union’s technological sovereignty, but it also clearly reflects many of the EU’s unresolved dilemmas. However, if one critical flaw had to be singled out, it would be that it neither rests on nor addresses one of the essential elements of technological sovereignty: agency, that is, the capacity to decide what the digital future into which technology will be integrated should look like…(More)”.
