Digital sovereignty: when Europe renames its industrial failure
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…