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AnalysisPolitics

Europe’s quest for technological sovereignty

A continent that regulates technology well is asking whether it can also build it, and what that would cost.

By Rational Times Editorial · 1 min read
Flags of European Union countries. Representational image.
Flags of European Union countries. Representational image.Photo: Pexels

Europe has become the world’s most assertive regulator of digital technology. Now it is asking a harder question: can it also be a producer? Sovereignty, the argument goes, is not only about rules but about capability.

The ambition is to build, not just to police. That means investment in research, in chips, in the firms that turn ideas into industries. It also means accepting that capability takes time, capital, and a tolerance for failure.

Sceptics warn that sovereignty can become protectionism, and that closing a market rarely produces the innovation it promises. The balance between openness and independence is delicate, and easy to get wrong.

What Europe decides will shape more than its own economy. In a world dividing into technological blocs, the choices of a major market become the rules others learn to live with.

EuropePolitics
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