All spring, EU countries and the market have been waiting for the European Commission's promised large technology package. The idea is to strengthen Europe's digital independence at a time when the digital sector is deeply dependent on the United States.
Just a few years ago, this was not seen as a problem – but since President Trump has regularly threatened to take over Greenland, leave NATO or impose huge tariffs on EU goods, more and more people have started to feel uncomfortable with such total reliance on American companies and US-produced online services.
"We live in a world where these very strong dependencies . . . can be used as a weapon against us. That's why it's so important to look at our vital sectors and the dependencies we have," said EU Commissioner for Digital Henna Virkkunen after a meeting in Lille, France, this spring, according to the AFP news agency.
Test the clouds
Not least, there is concern about cloud services – everything from data storage to programs that run on external servers. According to the Financial Times, Europe currently relies on more than 70 percent of services from three of the biggest US companies: Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
The Commission's technology package is now expected to include a call for member states to "stress test" their authorities' cloud use to identify any problems, with a view to potentially switching to more secure alternatives. Cloud use will also be graded into four levels to identify areas where the highest security is most important.
The European Commission also wants more people to use technology and programs based on open source software, to avoid unnecessary dependencies, reports the news site Politico Europe .
The technology package is also expected to include investments in joint purchases of computer chips and promises to release more money for the development of AI, European cloud services and data capacity.
Concerns about the US
Nervousness about the US response is clear and widespread. The technology package has been postponed repeatedly during the spring, which critics have mainly interpreted as concerns and internal squabbles over how far to challenge Trump and the American internet giants.
US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder has already warned the EU against coming up with overly protectionist plans.
"Should we make Europe more competitive or others less competitive? One is a good plan, the other is a bad plan," Puzder said in an AFP interview in April.
