Having failed to build champions, invest heavily in infrastructure, or anticipate technological disruptions, Europe has made digital sovereignty its watchword. Behind the proliferation of standards, summits, and so-called « sovereign » offerings, what is emerging is less a strategy for regaining ground than a way of rationalizing what is now a structural industrial decline. In Europe, digital sovereignty is everywhere. In speeches, press releases, summits, regulatory texts, and posts published by elected officials on social media. It is invoked as a strategic obviousness, a political emergency, almost a promise of catching up, and sometimes even as a crazy pretext for prohibiting European companies from using American services. But as the term gains traction, a profound ambiguity is revealed: sovereignty is less a genuine industrial project than a narrative designed to organize a now inevitable dependence. No new capacity The recently announced partnership between IONOS and emma fits perfectly into this dynamic. Multicloud, transparency, compliance, legal control: the proposal is serious, useful, and sometimes…
