How the EuroStack initiative is fighting for Digital Sovereignty in Europe

Europe’s digital public sphere is built on infrastructure, platforms, and standards largely controlled by a handful of non-European Big Tech companies. This dependency is no longer a purely economic issue—it shapes democratic discourse, limits policy autonomy, constrains innovation, and exposes societies to geopolitical and systemic risk. The EuroStack initiative responds to this challenge with a simple but ambitious idea: Europe needs its own coherent, open, and sovereign digital stack.
This talk introduces the EuroStack initiative and explains why “breaking the chains” from Big Tech is not about isolationism or technological nostalgia, but about restoring strategic choice. From cloud and connectivity to collaboration tools, data spaces, and AI, EuroStack aims to align European values—openness, competition, privacy, and democratic accountability—with the technologies that underpin everyday life.
We will explore how digital dependency emerged, why regulation alone is insufficient, and how coordinated investment in open standards, interoperable platforms, and European ecosystems can rebalance power in the digital world. The session connects digital sovereignty to civil society, innovation, and resilience, and argues that a pluralistic, federated tech landscape is essential for a healthy democracy.
EuroStack is not a silver bullet—but without it, Europe risks remaining a rule-setter without real technological agency. This talk makes the case for why now is the moment to act.