The joint participation of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in an event in Berlin to strengthen Europe’s technological independence suggests that they are serious about the issue. Europe’s difficulties in keeping pace with the United States and China in technical and digital innovations – from artificial intelligence to semiconductor production to cloud computing – are blamed for the continent’s sluggish economic growth and seemingly bleak outlook.<\/p>\n
The Berlin meeting, titled \u201cEuropean Digital Sovereignty Summit,\u201d focused on the risks of dependence on China and the United States for increasingly critical infrastructure. \u201cDigital sovereignty has costs, but the costs of digital dependence are even higher,\u201d Merz said, while Macron said he did not want Europe to be a customer of the US or China or a \u201cvassal\u201d. \u201cWe clearly want to develop our own solutions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One of the areas where Europe is particularly dependent on China is the infrastructure it uses for its telecommunications networks, from companies like Huawei and ZTE. "They had very few competitors and alternatives, and most alternatives are much more expensive," Ilaria Mazzocco, deputy director of the Board of Trustees for Chinese Economics and Business, said. However, according to a report, it increasingly appears that the European Commission is looking for ways to force EU member states to exclude Huawei and ZTE from their networks.<\/p>\n
The European Commission recommended that member states take measures to prevent \u201chigh-risk providers\u201d from being integrated into their new 5G internet networks. However, no legal requirement has been made. The Commission Vice President now wants to convert this recommendation into a legal obligation. A spokesperson for the European Commission said they were \u201curging\u201d member states to implement the recommendations as \u201cthe lack of rapid action puts the EU as a whole at clear risk\u201d. The EU’s willingness to crack down on Huawei was demonstrated by its decision to ban Huawei lobbyists from meeting European Commission officials.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Merz is preparing the ground for stricter legislation. \u201cWe have decided within the government that we will replace components, for example in the 5G network, with components from our own production wherever possible,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we will not allow any components from China in the 6G network.\u201d The German business daily newspaper reports that the federal government has agreed to stricter legislation to make it easier to remove components deemed a safety risk.<\/p>\n
Richard Youngs points out that current European attempts to achieve \u201ctechnology sovereignty\u201d are complicated by the fact that European governments have different expectations of the concept. \u201cSome focus mainly on the competitiveness aspect, others on the security aspect, still others on the development of a public model for digital technology,\u201d he said. The security element is legitimate, but competitiveness is probably the strongest driver at the moment.<\/p>\n
With the European Commission now apparently ready to take a much tougher stance against Huawei and ZTE, the possible consequences for Europe of excluding these companies are being considered. Lars Klingbeil, the German finance minister, is visiting China and the topic of the possible exclusion of Chinese technology from German telecommunications networks will certainly come up. \u201cBeijing won\u2019t like this,\u201d says Mazzocco. "I think that would be very damaging for Huawei. And Huawei is a very important company for Beijing right now."<\/p>\n
If Europe moves forward with a legal ban on Huawei and ZTE, there will be more focus on viable alternatives. Member states could tap home-grown European companies such as Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson to help develop new networks, but the costs would be far higher than those of Chinese rivals – a tough sell at a time when many European governments are mired in heavy public debt and struggling to boost sluggish growth. \u201cIt’s up to Europe to actually come up with a plan to make sure it doesn’t cave under the pressure and put in place regulation that it can realistically implement and then withstand any pressure from China,\u201d Mazzocco says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
European Digital Sovereignty Summit The joint participation of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in an event in Berlin to strengthen Europe’s technological independence suggests that they are serious about the issue. Europe’s difficulties in keeping pace with the United States and China in technical and digital innovations – from artificial intelligence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[14724,219,3170,1295,10271,864,16038,85,15630,6193,18189,3125,8338,6200,17011,877,1022,13592,13437,19090,19092,372,3200,19091,1423,2234],"class_list":{"0":"post-27442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-5g","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-beijing","11":"tag-berlin","12":"tag-board-of-directors","13":"tag-china","14":"tag-cloud-computing","15":"tag-competition-economics","16":"tag-economy-of-china","17":"tag-emmanuel-macron","18":"tag-ericsson","19":"tag-european-commission","20":"tag-friedrich-merz","21":"tag-government-debt","22":"tag-huawei","23":"tag-innovation","24":"tag-internet","25":"tag-lars-klingbeil","26":"tag-member-state-of-the-european-union","27":"tag-network-sovereignty","28":"tag-nokia","29":"tag-president-of-france","30":"tag-republic-of-china-1912-1949","31":"tag-richard-youngs","32":"tag-semiconductor","33":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27444,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27442\/revisions\/27444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}