Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away

Robin Berjon is a technologist working on governance issues. He is the former vice president of data governance at The New York Times and former vice chair of the board of W3C. Cori Crider is a senior fellow at Future of Technology Institute and Open Markets, and an honorary professor at UCL Faculty of Laws.

One would rightly quail if just a few foreign firms owned Europe’s roads, ports or electricity grid. Yet, for 15 years, this is precisely what we’ve allowed to happen to our tech infrastructure — the backbone of our economy and democracy.

Today, a handful of U.S. giants control the systems we rely on every single day: search, social media, advertising and browsers. These aren’t just online services, they’re the rails Europe’s economy runs on. And right now, we don’t own the tracks.

Europe is beginning to wake up, though. Today in Brussels, one can often hear EU officials using buzzwords like “tech sovereignty” and “EuroStack.” The urgent question is whether the bloc’s leaders will back these words up with deeds — and if they have the will to use medicine strong enough for what ails us.

So far, signals are mixed: Last week a memorandum leaked from U.S.-EU trade talks suggested European officials may water down tech enforcement in hopes of reducing tariffs. If that’s true, it would be a serious error — strategically and politically. And new polling shows us why.

A recent YouGov survey found strong majorities in Germany, France and Spain want the EU to enforce its digital laws, even if it upsets U.S. President Donald Trump. Sixty-three percent of polled Germans with a view on the matter said tech enforcement is actually too relaxed. Moreover, a whopping 74 percent of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s own party want a tough stance on Big Tech, and billionaire Elon Musk’s flirtation with far-right causes and threats to cut Starlink satellites in Ukraine have only sharpened this sentiment.

No one wants an avoidable fight, of course. But as history shows, bullies respect strength, not hesitation.

Some in the Commission may hope to placate Trump for long enough to liberate Europe’s economy with industrial policy. And yes, the bloc urgently needs to build — both within member countries and across the continent. But if Europe is serious about taking back control over critical tech infrastructure, we must face an uncomfortable fact: Big Tech has tilted the tables in its favor for so long that no one policy is likely to be enough.

What Europe needs now is a coordinated play: break, enforce, build.

First step: break. This means being prepared to dismantle entrenched tech monopolies, starting with Google. While Google sometimes avoids criticism compared with its counterparts like X or Meta, arguably it has an even bigger impact on our economy and society.

Since the tech giant bought ad-tech firm DoubleClick in 2008, it has steadily built one of the most powerful digital monopolies in history, and its effects have been brutal. As Google’s share of digital ad revenue climbed, Europe lost over 30 percent of its media jobs and local reporting withered, leaving in its place a wave of “news deserts” — areas where people lack reliable local sources of information.

The realization of this phenomenon recently made its way into debates in Germany regarding a proposed digital tax, with Commissioner for Culture and the Media Wolfram Weimer criticizing Big Tech’s years of “clever tax avoidance” and their “monopoly-like structures.”

But there’s no need for similes: Google is a monopoly. Two U.S. courts have now ruled it monopolized search and advertising technology, and a sister case in Brussels could follow suit — though a formal breakup decision seems to be delayed. Some reports also suggest enforcers may simply settle for another fine, but this won’t correct the market. For Google, fines are like a parking ticket for monopolizing a sector worth tens of billions.

Next step: enforce. With the Digital Markets Act, Europe already has tools in hand that could help challenger tech scale and thrive. The bloc’s startup associations and Germany’s leading tech firms — even fabled U.S. tech accelerator Y Combinator — all urge that, if enforced, the DMA could be innovators’ best hope. But from Apple’s extortionate App Store tax to Meta’s “pay or OK” scheme, which charges Facebook users to not be spied on, U.S. monopolies have repeatedly thumbed their nose at the law.

In response, the DMA’s skeleton crew of 80 is struggling to keep up. And no wonder: The city of Brussels has double that number of staff devoted to parking enforcement alone. The DMA will only meet its economic promise with further boosting not diluting, and the Commission needs to give up the illusion that monopolies will roll over with more dialogue.

Finally: build. Europe has the talent and know-how to take back today’s tech infrastructure. Projects are already underway to build shared services in social media and search, which will soon allow creative European companies to emerge at a fraction of the cost. And this new infrastructure won’t need public subsidies forever — but it could certainly benefit from greater investment.

Boosting this new infrastructure, including with funds diverted from tech giants, would not only liberate the media from rowing in the galleys of tech monopolies, it would also help everyone else, from shopkeepers to artists, who depend on platforms they neither control nor trust to reach their customers and audiences.

With the courage and foresight to seize this moment, Europe’s leaders stand to gain unharvested political potential. The recent comments made by Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen, stating the EU tech rulebook isn’t negotiable, are promising, but they need to be backed by action.

Enforcing the EU’s laws, reclaiming a fair share of the value extracted by monopolies, breaking them up to unfreeze markets and using the proceeds to invest in our digital infrastructure could be exactly the kind of economic reset Europe needs.