Open, Sovereign, Independent AI: Europe’s greatest challenge?
Francesca Bria’s keynote at the European Parliament Conference “Shaping Europe’s digital model: Building alliances for a progressive European vision”.
As we gather right in the middle of the negotiations on the AI Act, where the Council presidency and the European Parliament’s negotiators have just reached a provisional political agreement, we find ourselves at a defining moment in shaping Europe’s digital future. This conference is an important forum for discussion and strategic planning, guiding the direction of our digital societies.
In my speech today, I will focus on three pillars that are key to defining Europe’s path in the Digital Age. My goal is to contribute to our dialogue by emphasizing the importance of a bold and visionary European technology and digital strategy. Such a strategy is not only desirable but also essential for the EU’s future political course.
1. Upholding EU’s Regulatory Approach in the Digital Sphere
Our first foundational pillar focuses on the robust enforcement of the EU’s regulatory framework, what we have been defining as a new Constitution for our Digital Age. The negotiations on the AI Act are a crucial milestone. This Act is not only a piece of legislation, but is a guiding compass designed to align Artificial Intelligence with our constitutional values, including fundamental rights and democratic principles. Its potential to impose strict regulations on high-risk AI applications and enforce mandatory transparency could position Europe as a frontrunner in progressive AI governance on a global stage. Reaching an ambitious agreement on this Act is extremely important, although the details of this regulation will have to be analyzed in detail in the coming weeks, when the full text is available.
This provisional agreement is just te beginning, since we face significant challenges moving forward. The AI Act has been under strong pressures that risked to weaken its effectiveness, potentially reducing it to a non-binding code of conduct. The regulation of AI models, which are fundamental in essential services across sectors like healthcare, education, climate policy, housing, and urban planning, could not be left in the hands of private corporations, primarily driven by financial gains and market dominance, often prioritizing profit over public interest. The volatility in the industry, as exemplified by the OpenAI saga, clearly demonstrates the pressing need for stringent and effective AI regulations.
Alongside the AI Act, the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Data Act are key pieces of legislation to curb the market power of major tech giants. When enforced effectively, they are essential for promoting fair competition and safeguarding consumer rights.
However, regulation alone is not sufficient. Our approach should not merely regulate non-European Big Tech companies, but also proactively carve out an independent path in the digital age. This realization leads us to our second pillar.
2. Competing on Europe’s Own Terms and Establishing a Comprehensive EU Digital Industrial Policy: “ Europe Stack”
Europe’s reliance on imported technology raises concerns about its digital independence, industrial competitiveness, and economic security. To address this, Europe must develop its own technology sector, fostering open, sovereign, and independent solutions that reflect European values and needs.
To strengthen our economic and political sovereignty in a complex geopolitical environment, Europe needs a combination of regulatory frameworks and active digital industrial policies. Our objective goes beyond merely crafting regulations; it’s about building new markets and industries, creating innovative institutions, and fostering ecosystems that truly serve the public interest.
To build our own tech ecosystem, “Europe Stack”, we should prioritize strategic investments in research, innovation, and digital public infrastructures. We should grow European deep tech champions in space, quantum, biotech, renewable energy, chips, green hydrogen, and photonics. This requires attracting talent, training millions of researchers in deep tech and building a network of engineering and technology transfer hubs around our leading universities and research centers, beyond the national dimension.
Our innovation strategy should be a blend of patient public investments, agile venture capital, along with large-scale industrial alliances, like the IPCEI in hydrogen, cloud, and batteries. For instance, the European Chips Act, targeting over €100bn in investments, is vital for Europe’s lead in semiconductor production. Likewise, our investment in exascale supercomputers aims to make Europe a leader in computing power, opening the infrastructure to AI startups, SMEs, and the open-source community.
To implement this strategy, the EU must use all available instruments and consider new ones. This includes faster and strategic decision-making at EU level, targeted subsidies, common EU funds, intelligent procurement, and ethical frameworks. We must prioritize European native tech products that align with our societal values and standards. Europe should enforce digital regulations that mandate free and open-source technology, data sovereignty, and privacy. These principles should underpin our procurement and funding processes.
This is a challenge that transcends mere technological concerns, representing a critical component of our political agenda. The recent takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk underscores the increasing influence of tech tycoons over major communication channels, highlighting the pressing need for Europe to develop its own social media platforms governed by democratic principles, beyond the surveillance business models that exploit and manipulate personal data and information.
As Europe approaches political elections, the urgency of creating digital platforms immune to the manipulative strategies of populist and far-right movements is more apparent than ever. These platforms must be founded with a strong commitment to digital rights, cultivating a digital public sphere that champions values such as pluralism, privacy, and freedom of expression.
To achieve this, I propose the creation of a 10 billion euros EU Digital Sovereignty Fund, to unify and scale our efforts. This fund will blend grants and equity investments, fostering pan European collaboration among our national innovation agencies. This ambitious initiative will have the aim to establish robust digital public infrastructures and digital commons, offering viable alternatives to current monopolistic digital platform models, supporting the deployment of open AI models and decentralized applications, sovereign data spaces, open knowledge tools and content, privacy-preserving digital IDs, and digital payment systems.
These tools represent the foundational common stack essential for creating public options for pan-European digital services and apps that effectively create open source and interoperable marketplaces in smart mobility, urban development, healthcare, citizens participation, education, and culture, designed to plug in local tax, labour, and licencing rules.
3. Championing Innovation in the Public Interest, by forging new Governance Models and new Global Alliances.
This gets me to the third and crucial pillar in our path towards digital sovereignty: Europe must play a key role in championing innovation in the public interest, by forging new governance and economic models, and establishing global alliances. This significant aspect of our strategy directly addresses a fundamental question: Can we shape the trajectory of technological progress through democratic control?
The current path of AI development, predominantly driven by private corporations, is dominated by ideologies such as “AGI” and “effective altruism,” it emphasizes market-driven solutions and a profit-oriented ethos. This situation has led to a reality where AI development is nearly inseparable from Big Tech’s influence. Their control over computing power, data, and market reach dictates the rules of the digital game, creating strong dependencies for industries, SMEs, public institutions, workers, and citizens. However, Europe must not capitulate to this paradigm.
In envisioning the future, we see AI agents as intermediaries in all our digital interactions, as key repositories of all human-generated knowledge. It is critical that these pervasive platforms remain open, universally accessible, and under democratic control, not monopolized by tech giants from Silicon Valley. Managing these AI systems as open digital commons is essential, ensuring transparency, democratic accountability, and public oversight.
Europe’s alternative to the Big Tech model of Silicon Valley, characterized by monopoly power and surveillance capitalism, and the Big State model of digital authoritarian centralized control seen in China, should be Big Democracy, a new social pact in today’s techno-capitalism. This pact must address immediate AI challenges and its long-term implications on employment, labor rights, creativity, education, welfare systems, and societal norms.
Europe’s commitment to digital citizenship, data sovereignty, and privacy technologies positions us at the forefront of a digital society that aligns with the United Nations agenda to promote global digital commons. Digital commons are emerging locally. For example, during my time as Barcelona’s Chief Technology Officer, we initiated a movement to regain digital sovereignty, culminating in the creation of a platform for citizen participation today used globally. In Hamburg, I spearheaded a project to create a universal data sharing framework. This approach entails the transfer of data from private companies to public authorities via urban data intermediaries, mandating data sharing clauses into public procurement contracts, and conditioning public subsidies on compliance with these obligations. These examples show how local innovations that put people first can replicate and scale.
This conference is a crucial step in forming a diverse coalition committed to Europe’s democratic digitization, involving political parties, labor unions, civil society, academia, innovators, cities, and public institutions. As we prepare for a new European term, we must question our ability to forge a unique technological path and bring technological advancement under democratic governance. Today’s discussions are a call to action.
We must forge strong global alliances and establish a political agenda for our technological era. Our collective effort should aim to shape a future where technology aligns with progressive values, contributing to social and environmental justice and to reducing inequalities.
