Defense giants want von der Leyen to boost made-in-Europe tech


Quickly deteriorating EU-U.S. relations means Europe’s industrial base is uncovered to rising dangers hyperlinks to U.S. expertise in its provide chains, the letter warns, citing U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech on the Munich Safety Convention as proof. The EU is at the moment in a stand-off with Washington over tariffs on aluminum and metal particularly, and tensions over tech regulation have grown in current months.

Past Airbus and Dassault, the letter was additionally signed by the French public funding financial institution Bpifrance, European cloud firms together with Scaleway, OVHCloud, and Nextcloud, a number of tech business alliances together with France Digital, the European Digital SME Alliance and Join Europe, and smaller European tech firms like Proton and Ecosia.

Europe is extremely reliant on U.S. expertise. European knowledge is primarily saved on U.S. cloud companies, with firms like Amazon, Microsoft and Google taking over over two-thirds of the European market. Europe accounts for simply 10 p.c of the worldwide microchips market. Most lately, U.S. firms like OpenAI have taken the lead on synthetic intelligence apps like chatbots.

The Fee must “mobilize business” for a “continent-wide technique” to ensure Europe has its personal alternate options in these sector, the letter learn.

Frank Karlitschek, CEO of German file storage supplier Nextcloud, which signed the letter, stated “I don’t suppose the purpose is to be fully unbiased from the U.S. or the remainder of the world … however at the least have some property in order that we will at the least negotiate.”

The plea follows an earlier business initiative known as EuroStack, which entails the concept of constructing out a core European tech infrastructure throughout three layers (arduous infrastructure, middleman companies equivalent to cloud companies and purposes) and lowering Europe’s many dependencies on U.S. Massive Tech.