Published on IR.lv
A year ago, when the new European Commission began its work, one slogan rang out loudly — the call for Europe’s strategic sovereignty. And not only that — the Commission’s leadership declared that this would be a geopolitical European Commission. The European Union, they said, must strengthen its sovereignty in a world marked by growing hostility. China was described as a systemic rival, and the United States as no longer a reliable partner.
Gradually, the meaning behind this slogan has been refined. France has taken — at least on the rhetorical level — a leading role in shaping it.
The list of areas in which the European Union is expected to gain sovereignty has expanded rapidly over the past year. Data processing and storage, agriculture, healthcare, and raw materials have all been identified as priority sectors. When announcing the 750‑billion‑euro recovery plan, the European Commission set one of its goals as achieving technological sovereignty in critically important fields such as healthcare, transport, 5G, and others.
EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNTY UNDER THE WATCH OF THE FIVE EYES
In as early as 2017, the President of France called for developing Europe’s strategic autonomy in the fields of security and defense, as well as for creating a European army outside NATO. This initiative became known as the European Intervention Initiative, which at first was joined only by a few countries that shared a “common strategic culture.” Later, Emmanuel Macron put forward another idea — establishing cooperation among the intelligence services of EU member states, and earlier this year almost all member states signed a letter of intent supporting it.
Those who do not control their own country’s intelligence services have effectively lost their state. Throughout the last century — and increasingly today — intelligence agencies in many countries play an active, independent role both in parliamentary election processes and in carrying out various operations in the interests of certain groups or clans. The dependence or politicization of intelligence services has long been a widely discussed issue, probably in almost every country. In many of them — first and foremost in the United States — analysts have questioned whether the official authorities truly control “their” own intelligence services.
A few weeks ago, the head of one of Germany’s intelligence services was dismissed. It was reported that there are too many supporters of radical right‑wing views within Germany’s intelligence agencies. This suggests that these services are not — at least ideologically — neutral, but instead sympathize with radical right‑wing forces or at least with their ideas.
A member of the U.S. House of Representatives, J. Raskin, recently published a report stating that supporters of white supremacy have infiltrated law‑enforcement agencies. At the beginning of the summer, hundreds of thousands of documents from various U.S. police departments and other security structures were leaked to the public. Media outlets claimed that these so‑called “blue leaks” revealed a high level of racism and disregard for civil liberties within police institutions. It is likely that, over time, analysts will have reviewed these leaked materials and will comment on the true extent of the problems described.
At the moment, it does not seem plausible that EU member states could attain “sovereignty” in the field of security outside NATO, as it is difficult to imagine that European countries would ever receive the necessary authorization. This is also because all of us remain under the supervision of the world’s most capable intelligence network — the so‑called Five Eyes. This arrangement has existed for decades, and it is unclear why it would change.
To strengthen reasonable oversight, including over us in Europe, the Five Eyes network is now demanding access codes to WhatsApp communication tools, and one can only wonder why intelligence services have not had such access until now.
WHOEVER OWNS EUROPE’S DATA OWNS EUROPE’S ECONOMY
The slogan calling for the creation of a technologically sovereign European Union sounds appealing. First and foremost, it applies to the information technology sector. During the Covid‑19 pandemic, data traffic in telecommunications networks increased by 40–60%, and 80% of that traffic flowed into the major internet companies, which can be considered as being among the biggest beneficiaries of the Covid crisis. The share prices of the American IT giants — the group commonly referred to as GAFAM — rose by nearly 50%. Their combined market capitalization exceeded 5 trillion euros, and the Covid “happening” has only just begun to bear fruit.
Fewer than one hundred companies worldwide collect the majority of all data generated through online communication, according to estimates by Similarweb. Market concentration is extremely high, and monopolization will almost certainly continue to grow — just as it has in other sectors of the economy — unless some exceptional countermeasures are introduced.
In terms of market capitalization, eight of the world’s ten largest technology companies are American, one is Chinese, and one is South Korean. Europe does not appear in this list as an active player.
At present, the data of EU residents are primarily processed by companies located outside the European Union — the EU has effectively become a “data colony,” as concluded by the chairman of the German company Deutsche Telekom (T. Hoettges). Moreover, even when data are stored within European territory, they are kept on servers owned by non‑European companies.
The policy of encouraging data‑sharing has flourished in recent years and sounds genuinely appealing, with nothing seemingly self‑interested about it. Businesses share their data, governments introduce open‑data principles. In April, Microsoft announced its new data‑sharing principles, indirectly encouraging others to become more open as well. The volume of Europe’s data economy is growing impressively — from 300 billion euros in 2018 to 800 billion euros in 2025, according to the European Commission.
In 2018, the United States adopted a special law dedicated to cloud computing, which allows American intelligence services to obtain access to data held by American companies, regardless of geography.
EUROPEAN DATA IN EUROPEAN INFRASTRUCTURE
At this point, one ordinary Austrian named M. Schrems becomes important. For several years, he had been fighting with — or more precisely, against — Facebook’s practices regarding data. Specifically, he opposed the way in which a person’s data — in this case, his own — ended up in the possession of the U.S. company Facebook. He argued that the Americans were not complying with EU data‑protection requirements.
The case reached a certain conclusion this summer, when the Court of Justice of the European Union annulled the EU–US data‑exchange agreement. In the Court’s view, the once‑chosen, resonant name of the agreement — the Privacy Shield — had proven meaningless. The arrangement did not ensure the security of European citizens’ data.
Criticism of the EU’s slowness and indecision has been voiced for decades, yet is everything truly so hopelessly beyond repair?
France and Germany, recognizing that the EU is losing and handing over control of its data to the Americans, decided to create a sovereign European data infrastructure with the aim of avoiding the storage of data in the resources of American and Chinese technology companies. This initiative is supported by the member states. However, Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs recently emphasized that this infrastructure would also be open to cooperation with Chinese and U.S. technology firms. For now, this appears contradictory — either it is “sovereign,” or it involves cooperation with the Chinese and the Americans. It is possible that a different principle will prevail: yes, foreign technology companies could participate, but the cloud capacities created would not be subject to the legislation of other countries. That would be a conspicuous act of non‑compliance toward the Americans.
France’s finance minister regularly criticizes the United States, especially the dominance of its digital companies. At the same time, he calls for supporting the creation of so‑called European champions in the economy. Likewise the European Commission continues its efforts to curb the dominance of digital platforms — primarily U.S. firms.
It is possible that the movement toward “sovereignty” is indeed underway, and that not all ruling clans and oligarchic groups in Western Europe are prepared to accept an irreversible loss of autonomy and competitiveness.
In the areas of data security, genetically modified (and genetically edited) products, climate policy, and others, the EU — fully aware of its market power — is attempting to impose its quality and safety standards on regions and countries outside the Union.
Another sector in which the EU seeks greater “sovereignty” and independence is rare‑earth metals and other raw materials essential for modern industries — a field in which China is the true superpower. According to the EU’s own calculations, the Union is about 60% dependent on China for 27 critically important materials. It is likely that the figures for 2020 will be even less favorable. This is also why the European Union cannot afford to behave too aggressively toward China and its companies. At the same time, the United States is even more dependent on China in the rare‑earth sector, with its reliance reaching as high as 80 percent.
In agriculture, the EU plans to create a unified data space. Agriculture is becoming a rapidly expanding — and even vitally important — data domain. This applies both to the economic performance of agricultural producers and their use of agrochemicals, as well as to their loyalty to climate and environmental protection. These data can influence the prices of leased land. A small scandal on this topic recently emerged regarding the operating model of the company Tillable. Whoever controls the production data of farms ultimately controls both the farmers themselves and our food products. Friends of the Earth point out that Europe lacks specific regulations for agricultural data, and that as a result both the data and the data‑driven technological solutions in agriculture end up in the hands of a few global corporations, which thereby consolidate their dominance over the EU’s agricultural and food sectors.
The lack of data sovereignty in agriculture, combined with persistent U.S. pressure to introduce genetically edited crop varieties more widely in Europe, will increase the dominance of global corporations and allow them to shape — and ultimately dictate — our choices of food products.
Viewed from this perspective, the recently announced European Green Deal, the circular economy, and the development of organic farming acquire a clear logic, as these initiatives would lead toward a certain degree of sovereignty.
In the field of healthcare, the largest EU countries likewise aim to create an interoperable health‑data system. At present, the EU lacks sufficiently robust health statistics — that is, data that could be compiled from all member states using a unified methodology. Europe’s excessive dependence in the healthcare sector became evident during the Covid crisis. Within this logic, voices were even heard in the European Commission over the summer suggesting that vaccines intended for the Covid crisis should be purchased from pharmaceutical companies already now — except in cases where they were produced in the United States.
A scandal involving sensitive personal health data recently erupted in France. Fearing the possible transfer of personal data to the United States, several associations and trade unions asked a judge of the Council of State to urgently suspend the Health Data Hub platform. The judge concluded that personal data held in the Netherlands under the contract with Microsoft cannot legally be transferred outside the European Union. If the risk cannot be fully excluded that U.S. intelligence services might request access to these data, this may not justify a complete shutdown of the platform, but it does require special precautionary measures and strict oversight.
The Health Data Hub — a state‑run health‑data platform — was created at the end of 2019 to promote the sharing of health data and support research. Some of these data are used for managing public‑health emergencies and improving knowledge about the Covid‑19 virus. In April, the platform signed a contract with the Irish subsidiary of the American company Microsoft for data hosting and software services.
EUROPE AS A BATTLEGROUND
Europe must not reduce itself to a mere battleground between the United States and China, writes Nicholas G. Casarès in his analysis of how the EU is developing its capabilities in information technology and 5G telecommunications. Europe, he argues, should not accept other countries’ technologies and principles in the 5G domain.
Whether Europe can or cannot avoid reducing itself in this way — to some extent, it has already happened, and it is unclear why the Americans (and, to a lesser degree, the Chinese) should give up their market space simply because some in Europe desire greater sovereignty.
European Union flag. Photo: Edijs Pālens, LETA