More than fifty mentions of the US, Trump or Anthropic dominated a European Parliament debate on tech sovereignty this week, dwarfing China’s eleven and Russia’s two. Even the Death Star from Star Wars came up more often than Moscow. The numbers reveal exactly where MEPs see Europe’s biggest technological threat.
The session was held at the Industry, Research and Energy Committee on Tuesday. It was meant to discuss the Commission’s tech sovereignty strategy, presented on 3 June. European Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen attended in person. But last week’s US export control directive on Anthropic’s most advanced AI models gave the debate a sharper edge.
Brussels defends its strategy
Vice-President Virkkunen defended the Commission’s approach. “We are seeing a new generation of highly capable AI models reach the market. These models offer significant benefits, including for cyber defence, but they also raise serious cyber security concerns that need to be addressed. This is not only about a single jurisdiction or single company it is a shared challenge. We believe that contingency measures taken in this light should not be discriminatory against partners,” she said, adding that the package would help deliver the independence Europe needs.
But MEPs were largely unconvinced. Peter Agius (EPP/MLT) warned that Europe risks putting “its economy in the hands of Donald Trump and his big tech oligarchs.”
“We have seen what happened to international court judges being cut off from essential digital services because of sanctions. Just try to imagine living without Microsoft, Mastercard and other American technology, good luck, but you can’t! and therefore Europe cannot ignore its tech dependency. A kill switch to turn off technology is not only a risk today, it is a reality. On Friday, the US administration decided to turn off the most powerful AI models of Anthropic for the EU. This is a watershed moment. Europe needs to control its own tech infrastructure if we want to stop the blackmail. We need to build our own solutions using the tech talent that we have in Europe. We can build it cheaper and provide services that do respect our rules,” he said.
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A wake-up call for Europe
Virginijus Sinkevičius (Greens/EFA/LTU) agreed that the Anthropic episode should be a final “wake-up call for Europe”, as this is exactly what digital dependence looks like. “Whatever the exact security concerns, the political lesson is very clear. A technology that European companies, researchers and public authorities may need tomorrow might be just limited by a decision taken outside of Europe. It does not always come as a crisis. Sometimes it comes as a very simple update to terms of access, an export control decision, or a model that suddenly is no longer available,” he said.
If we want sovereignty, we must be ready to pay for it, organise it, and defend it. — Virginijus Sinkevičius, MEP (Greens/EFA/LTU)
Mr Sinkevičius added that while Europe needs partners, including in the United States, that “cannot mean a structural dependence. If we want resilience, we must first of all build it ourselves. If we want sovereignty, we must be ready to pay for it, organise it, and defend it.”
Ms Virkkunen pointed out that the Cloud and AI Development Act plans to triple Europe’s data centre capacity. This will happen within the next five to seven years. The act, she said, also encourages tech sovereignty in the public sector. “The Commission’s own internal digital sovereignty action plan is paving the way from migrating our core IT systems to EU-based cloud infrastructure to deploying sovereign AI tools in our daily operations,” she said, highlighting the impact of purchasing power in public procurement.
