Germany’s digital minister Karsten Wildberger said in an interview with Reuters on Saturday that Europe must build its own digital infrastructure to cut down dependence on American tech giants, but he made clear this is not about cutting ties with them.
Wildberger said the goal is digital sovereignty, not isolation, explaining that Germany and the European Union must act as players in the technology sector rather than customers. “We need to actively participate in this sector as players, not as customers,” he said.
This comes as many Europeans grow uneasy about U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policies, which focus heavily on promoting American interests and have pushed some European governments and businesses to look for alternatives to U.S. technology providers that dominate everything from cloud services to AI infrastructure.
Wildberger said Europe must not stay dependent when “there is a huge growth market for technology, innovation, software, data and artificial intelligence.”
Germany demands real control over data and infrastructure
Wildberger said that Germany and Europe have already built impressive players in the field, naming Mistral AI, DeepL, and Aleph Alpha as proof that the continent can compete globally.
But the German lawmaker admitted that the U.S. still leads in several core areas, especially in artificial intelligence, and that cooperation will remain necessary. “Digital sovereignty doesn’t mean protectionism,” he said. “We want to and must be accessible for the global market.”
Asked about fears that Trump might disrupt transatlantic partnerships, Wildberger downplayed them. “U.S. companies of course also continue to be interested in doing business abroad,” he said, but added that German firms must be able to choose who they work with, where they store their data, and who runs their digital infrastructure.
For Wildberger, digital sovereignty reportedly means rethinking the entire supply chain from rare earth materials and chip design to servers and undersea cables that make the modern internet possible.
Europe keeps leaning on US hyperscalers despite new policies
Meanwhile, at the Forrester Technology & Innovation Summit EMEA in London, Forrester predicted that Europe will intensify its push to reduce dependence on global providers and take more control over its technology stack. But despite all that effort, no European company will fully detach from U.S. hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud by 2026.
Analysts linked this continued dependence to geopolitical tensions, economic instability, and strict new laws such as the European Green Deal and the EU AI Act, both of which restrict experimental, high-risk technology use. These conditions, they said, will force European businesses to keep working with American cloud providers that already dominate the market.
The same report said that consumer use of generative AI across Europe will double by 2026, but enterprise adoption will still lag far behind the United States due to tighter regulations and less-developed AI ecosystems. The United Kingdom, however, is expected to move faster because of lighter rules and fewer language barriers.
The study also predicted that EU defense spending would bring a 20% increase in technology budgets for public infrastructure. This comes after NATO members agreed in June 2025 to lift defense spending to 5% of GDP, with 1.5% of that set aside for “enabling infrastructure.”
Finally, it warned that Britain’s AI policies could backfire. The UK government’s enthusiasm for U.S. technology firms like Anthropic and OpenAI, its refusal to sign global AI governance agreements, and its lack of binding regulation could erode public trust even as productivity rises.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/germany-stronger-eu-digital-infrastructure/
