Becoming an innovative powerhouse once more: A new policy paper presents the ‘European Way’ as an ambitious roadmap for a coherent EU digital policy approach.
The EU falls behind in the technological competition not for lack of potential but for lack of coordinated action. “A vast internal market, a highly skilled workforce, world-class research institutions, and a strong regulatory tradition” already exist in the EU, and these are crucial ingredients to become a key player in the race for (regaining) technological leadership. But to achieve this, the EU cannot continue with reactive regulation and piecemeal initiatives; instead, it must leverage its strengths to pursue a unified, principle-based approach. These messages underpin the recent policy paper The ‘European Way’ – A Blueprint for Reclaiming our Digital Future, produced by a cohort of 30+ independent experts, which is a call for Europe to reclaim its digital future. The paper aims at: (1) convincing decision makers to address the EU’s excessive and unilateral technology dependencies; (2) presenting the ‘European Way’ as a values-driven digital policy vision; and (3) proposing six reform packages that translate the vision into concrete actions.
It is time for Europe to reclaim its digital future: though once an innovation powerhouse, the EU has transformed into a “digital colony”, due to its now high dependence on powerful companies from a handful of third countries for dominant digital platforms and much of its critical infrastructure. Considering the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape and heightened tensions, with even once reliable partnerships becoming uncertain, the EU must overcome its technological dependencies. The paper thus presents the ‘European Way’ as a blueprint to guide the EU’s digital transformation, based on principled governance, strategic resilience, interoperability, sustainability, trustworthiness, and a decentralised economy.
The authors, among them Kai Zenner, argue that achieving the ‘European Way’ and strategic autonomy rely on two crucial and interconnected steps. While creating an overall vision to each of the EU’s digital policy activities is an important first step, strategic autonomy can only be accomplished if this new vision is applied to the EU’s entire digital infrastructure, and through collaboration in areas where EU players are strong. To illustrate this, the authors refer to this infrastructure as a “highly intertwined technology stack”, which is composed of three levels: (1) the intermediation infrastructure; (2) the soft/logical infrastructure; and (3) the hard/physical infrastructure. However, as resources are not limitless, European policymakers must assess where in the stack the EU has potential for global leadership, focusing on reducing dependencies in these areas, and where the EU will need to rely on trusted partners.
The paper presents six reform packages that aim at: (1) powering up a European digital infrastructure; (2) supporting the completion of the Digital Single Market; (3) helping to transform the EU into a geopolitical protagonist; (4) reinforcing Good Governance principles in the EU’s digital policy procedure; (5) guaranteeing reliable and sustainable energy supply; and (6) attracting and retaining talent, while promoting digital skills. Though the reforms target a particular aspect to achieve this values-driven digital policy vision, overall strategic objectives exist. First, the reforms should attract significant investments in the EU tech ecosystem, while improving competitiveness and innovation on the Digital Single Market. Second, the packages, if implemented, will strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy by limiting critical dependencies in each layer of the aforementioned technology stack. Third, they will facilitate partnerships with like-minded countries and fund European private sector aggregations that can compete and win on the world stage at different layers of the technology stack.
However, the authors recognise that any ambitious roadmap faces institutional barriers within the EU: one such major hurdle is the unanimity requirement for core budgetary and treaty matters, effectively granting any government a veto power over the EU’s strategic posture. The authors thus propose a ‘Sovereignty Compact’ – an institutional circuit breaker preventing one Member from paralysing the willingness of the rest. This Compact would be a self-contained protocol annexed to the EU Treaties that enters into force once 2/3 of Member States, representing at least 70% of the EU population and GDP, ratify it. Consequently, critical decisions on defence, digital infrastructure, and related budget lines would be taken by qualified-majority voting. The authors explain that participating states would then gain automatic access to joint borrowing facilities, such as the Digital Sovereignty Fund, while non-participants would retain their existing rights but forgo those new resources.
While ambitious roadmaps require time and resources to implement, it is high time for the EU to seize the moment and become an innovation powerhouse once more. In today’s complex geopolitical landscape, the EU can no longer afford its tech dependencies, and a strategic turnaround is imperative. The ‘European Way’ – presented in this policy paper – provides an answer: “an actionable blueprint for a coherent digital policy approach anchored in democratic values, human-centric innovation, and open, rules-based collaboration.” Now it is up to EU decision makers – will they seize the moment?