Rapidly deteriorating EU-U.S. relations means Europe’s industrial base is exposed to growing risks links to U.S. technology in its supply chains, the letter warns, citing U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference as proof. The EU is currently in a stand-off with Washington over tariffs on aluminum and steel specifically, and tensions over tech regulation have grown in recent months.
Beyond Airbus and Dassault, the letter was also signed by the French public investment bank Bpifrance, European cloud companies including Scaleway, OVHCloud, and Nextcloud, several tech industry alliances including France Digital, the European Digital SME Alliance and Connect Europe, and smaller European tech companies like Proton and Ecosia.
Europe is highly reliant on U.S. technology. European data is primarily stored on U.S. cloud services, with companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google taking up over two-thirds of the European market. Europe accounts for just 10 percent of the global microchips market. Most recently, U.S. companies like OpenAI have taken the lead on artificial intelligence apps like chatbots.
The Commission needs to “mobilize industry” for a “continent-wide strategy” to make sure Europe has its own alternatives in these sector, the letter read.
Frank Karlitschek, CEO of German file storage provider Nextcloud, which signed the letter, said “I don’t think the goal is to be completely independent from the U.S. or the rest of the world … but at least have some assets so that we can at least negotiate.”
The plea follows an earlier industry initiative called EuroStack, which entails the idea of building out a core European tech infrastructure across three layers (hard infrastructure, intermediary services such as cloud services and applications) and reducing Europe’s many dependencies on U.S. Big Tech.
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