Tech is Europe’s fastest-growing sector and is essential to the bloc’s prosperity. So you’d have thought it would be protected vigorously.

The need for robust guards has already been made clear as the US and China have leveraged the EU’s technological dependencies, with plenty of examples of this in the last year alone. In October 2025, China’s ban on chips nearly brought the German automotive industry to a halt.

Then there were the sanctions imposed last May by the Trump administration on judges of the International Criminal Court, which highlighted the risk of a potential ‘kill switch’ scenario, whereby the US government could disrupt entire segments of the EU economy by issuing sanctions orders to American companies to deny access to their IT services.

With global tensions showing no sign of abating, the EU urgently needs uniform and unequivocal regulations that can shield its digital infrastructure across the board.

Yet on Wednesday, the Commission unveiled its key initiative to address vulnerabilities in semiconductors and cloud initiatives – the Chips Act review and the Cloud and AI Development Act (CAIDA).

As with the Cybersecurity Act review – which in January this year proposed the rapid phase-out of Chinese radio equipment from EU telecom networks – the proposals take a tough stance on China, but much less so on the US.

The difference in treatment is striking. The Chips Act identifies critical sectors that rely heavily on semiconductors that must be protected from a Chinese chokehold. This list closely mirrors the critical sectors identified under NIS2, which imposes enhanced cybersecurity requirements on sectors whose disruption could severely impact the EU’s economy and society.

By contrast, CAIDA’s cloud and AI component fails to identify any critical sectors. Private entities are merely “invited”, per an EU official, to consider CAIDA’s cloud sovereignty assurance scheme for their own risk assessment, but without any obligation. Given that the vast majority of cloud and AI capacities are provided by US companies, this is just another example of the Commission going soft on the US, despite the manifold risks this incurs.

One can only wonder how far the US will escalate threats and sanctions before Europe understands it cannot take chances on cloud sovereignty.

Tech – EU again goes soft on US in push for cloud sovereignty

The Commission’s long-awaited tech sovereignty package was officially unwrapped on Wednesday but – on cloud – the EU’s executive only proposed baby steps towards achieving greater digital autonomy for public administrations. On one level this is not surprising, given Europe’s public sector is almost entirely reliant on US-owned and operated cloud services. Naked threats from the Trump administration also look to have left their mark.

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