31/07/2026
# Europe's Technology Challenge: We Need More Than Digital Sovereignty.
Europe has rightly focused on defence, energy security and economic resilience. But there is another strategic challenge that deserves equal urgency:
**Technology sovereignty.**
China is advancing at a pace that many Europeans still underestimate.
In recent weeks alone, Chinese companies have demonstrated remarkable progress in AI, memory chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. **CXMT**, founded in 2016, is now among the world's leading DRAM manufacturers. **Moonshot AI** has released frontier AI models that compete with the best American systems. Chinese companies are also challenging Europe's technological jewel, **ASML**, far earlier than many experts predicted.
These are not isolated successes—they reflect a deliberate national strategy.
# # Europe excels at using technology—but not producing it
The Nordic countries remain global leaders in digital government, banking and public services.
However, there is a crucial difference between **using technology** and **building the technologies the world depends on**.
Europe remains heavily dependent on others for advanced semiconductors, AI infrastructure, cloud platforms and critical digital hardware.
That dependence creates both economic and geopolitical risks.
# # AI remains Europe's opportunity
Unlike semiconductor manufacturing, AI software can evolve rapidly.
Europe has world-class universities, exceptional engineers and leading research institutions. We can still build globally competitive AI companies.
But research alone is not enough.
We need:
• More venture capital.
• Faster commercialisation.
• Better conditions for scale-ups.
• Large investments in cloud infrastructure, data centres and reliable energy.
Innovation succeeds when great ideas can scale.
# # Hardware is our strategic weakness
Europe's biggest vulnerability is advanced hardware.
Beyond ASML's unique leadership in lithography, Europe has only limited presence across the semiconductor value chain. Meanwhile, the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan—and increasingly China—dominate chip production.
China has spent more than a decade building a complete industrial technology ecosystem spanning semiconductors, batteries, robotics, AI, clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
Its objective is clear:
**Technological self-reliance.**
# # Europe needs a Single Market for Innovation
Technology leadership requires more than industrial policy.
It requires companies that can scale as easily across Europe as they can across the United States.
That means completing the **Capital Markets Union**, mobilising European pension and institutional capital, and creating a genuine **Single Market for Innovation**.
Europe should also introduce a common European corporate structure—often referred to as **"EU Inc."**—allowing innovative companies to establish, grow and raise capital under one harmonised legal framework instead of navigating 27 different national systems.
European entrepreneurs should find it just as easy to build a pan-European company as American founders do across the fifty states.
# # Regulation should enable innovation
Europe should continue protecting consumers, competition and trust.
But regulation must also support innovation.
If compliance becomes so burdensome that Europe's best companies relocate before reaching global scale, we are effectively exporting our future competitiveness.
The objective is not less regulation.
It is **smarter regulation**.
# # Europe still has every opportunity
Europe possesses outstanding universities, talented engineers, strong industries and a market of more than 450 million people.
Our challenge is not talent.
It is **speed, investment and ex*****on**.
Technology sovereignty should now stand alongside defence and energy security as one of Europe's highest strategic priorities.
Because technological leadership increasingly determines economic prosperity, military capability, political influence and long-term resilience.
Europe has the knowledge.
Europe has the talent.
Europe has the capital.
**Now we need the ambition to build European technology champions—and the political courage to create the world's most competitive market for innovation.**
**What do you think should be Europe's highest priority: AI, semiconductors, a genuine Capital Markets Union, or a European "EU Inc." framework that allows innovative companies to scale across Europe as easily as they do in the United States?**
