SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A group of technology companies and lobbyists want the European Commission (EC) to take action to reduce the region's reliance on foreign-owned digital services and infrastructure.
In an open letter to EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, the group of nearly 100 organizations proposed the creation of a sovereign infrastructure fund to invest in key technology and lessen dependence on US corporations.
The letter points to recent events, including the farcical Munich Security Conference, as a sign of "the stark geopolitical reality Europe is now facing," and says that building strategic autonomy in key sectors is now an urgent imperative for European countries.
Signatories include aerospace giant Airbus, France's Dassault Systèmes, European cloud operator OVHcloud, chip designer SiPearl, open source biz Nextcloud, and a host of others including organizations such as the European Startup Network.
OVHcloud said the group was calling "for a collective industrial policy strategy to strengthen Europe's competitiveness and strategic autonomy. We are convinced this is the premise of what we hope will be a larger movement of the entire ecosystem."
Proposals include the sovereign infrastructure fund, which would be able to support public investment, especially in capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, with "significant additional commitment of funds allocated and/or underwritten" by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and national public funding bodies.
It also suggests there should be a formal requirement for the public sector to "buy European" and source their IT requirements from European-led and assembled solutions, while recognizing that these may involve complex supply chains with foreign components.
[...] This isn't the first time that concerns about US hegemony in technology have been raised. Recently, the DARE project launched to develop hardware and software based on the open RISC-V architecture, backed by EuroHPC JU funding, while fears have been aired about the dominance of American-owned cloud companies in the European market.
Such concerns have been heightened by recent actions, such as the suggestion that the US might cut off access to Starlink internet services in Ukraine as a political bargaining strategy. Starlink owner Elon Musk later denied that this would ever happen.
The letter notes that these issues have already been set out by the EuroStack initiative, made up of many of the companies that signed the letter to EC President von der Leyen. The Register asked the European Commission to comment.
On the other side of the pond, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) recently published a report claiming that US companies face "substantial financial burdens" due to the European Union's digital regulations.
It says that US tech companies are losing "billions" through having to comply with regulations such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and having to obtain user consent for their data to be used for advertising purposes.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday March 22 2025, @04:54PM
US losses were about 250,000 about (0.17% of the US population in 1945) killed in the European theater.
European losses were:
I haven't include figures for the Baltic states, Finland, Norway or Sweden. I think the point is made.
We are grateful for your involvement. The French village in which I now live has a special day to remember being freed by US forces. It has 3 different monuments to US dead, a wreath is placed at each one. The ceremonies are well attended and school children also participate. You contribution is not forgotten.
Your participation enabled a 2nd front to be established in order to divide Germany's forces between the western front and the eastern front. But you seem to be ignoring the European losses. Perhaps you think Europe was sat around doing nothing until the US got involved.
You lost far more though in the Pacific arena, but the UK and others also fought in the Far East providing land, air and sea forces.
Since that we have as Europeans supported wars alongside you in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Balkans, and many other places. I had both UK and US military forces under my administrative command in Bosnia. Yesterday, on FlightRadar24, I watched US, UK, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia flying air missions in support of each other in the Baltic and Black Sea regions.
The US has a habit of mocking France - yet they lost almost 10 times the number of losses you experienced in the whole of Europe. Poland lost 100 times your losses. We are stronger united - but that lesson is quickly being forgotten.
Being thrown to the mercy of Russia doesn't impress us at all. Trump should get his Nobel Peace Prize by doing something to justify it.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]