European Commission Presents EU Technological Sovereignty Package
The European Commission has presented the European Technological Sovereignty Package, a broad policy and legislative initiative aimed at reducing Europe’s dependence on non-EU suppliers for critical digital technologies. The package focuses on semiconductors, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, open source software, and the digitalisation of the energy system.
For EU digital law practitioners, the package is significant because it moves beyond regulation of digital services and data governance. It reflects a stronger industrial and security policy agenda, where the EU seeks to shape the infrastructure, supply chains, and computing capacity on which digital services increasingly depend.
The package includes two legislative proposals: the Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud and AI Development Act. These are accompanied by an Open Source Strategy and a Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and AI in the Energy Sector. The Commission frames these measures as essential to Europe’s ambition to become an “AI continent” while maintaining control over sensitive data, critical infrastructure, and strategic technology supply chains.
The Chips Act 2.0 would build on the existing EU Chips Act, which entered into force in 2023. The Commission identifies continued reliance on third countries for advanced semiconductor production and chip design as a structural risk. The new proposal would seek to accelerate permitting, support strategic projects, strengthen semiconductor regions through an excellence label, and connect European chip producers more closely with sectors such as data centers, cloud providers, and AI infrastructure operators.
The Cloud and AI Development Act is intended to support the Commission’s AI Continent Action Plan. Its central objective is to triple data center capacity in Europe over the next five to seven years while promoting sustainable and innovative infrastructure. The proposal would also create an EU-wide framework for assessing cloud and AI sovereignty, with particular relevance for critical applications, sensitive data, and public sector procurement.
Open source is treated as a core element of digital autonomy. The Open Source Strategy aims to strengthen European open source alternatives in areas such as cloud, AI, cybersecurity, internet technologies, and semiconductors. It also seeks to improve long-term maintenance, security, skills, start-up support, and public procurement practices for open source solutions.
The energy dimension is equally important. The Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and AI in the Energy Sector addresses the growing electricity demand linked to data centers and AI infrastructure. It proposes closer coordination between energy and digital sectors, better integration of data centers into the grid, wider use of smart meters, and development of secure AI models for the energy sector based on European data.
The legislative proposals will still need to be negotiated by the European Parliament and the Council before adoption and entry into force. Lawyers advising technology providers, cloud customers, public authorities, energy companies, and investors should monitor the package closely. If adopted, it may affect permitting, procurement, data localization risk assessments, cloud contracting, semiconductor investments, and compliance strategies for AI and energy infrastructure.
