The Paradox of Sovereignty: Europe’s Search for Freedom in a Connected World
The EU talks about digital sovereignty as independence, yet its strength still depends on shared systems, U.S. clouds, and global code.
Learning note: not an expert take, but a student’s reflection
Lately I keep hearing the word sovereignty.
In Brussels documents, in news about “Eurostack,” even in conversations with clients. It sounds strong, like a promise of independence, safety, and control.
But when I look closer, it’s less clear what the word actually means. Sovereign from what? From whom? And at what cost?
When people talk about “European sovereignty,” they rarely mean what a traditional state would. It’s not about isolation or self-sufficiency. It’s about freedom to act, the ability to decide your own dependencies rather than have them decided for you.
That sounds sensible. But as I’m discovering, it’s also a paradox.
Quick takeaways
- EU “sovereignty” ≠ self-sufficiency. It means strategic autonomy, or freedom to choose.
- Hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google are partners and risks at the same time.
- The EU’s sovereignty framework often rewards efficiency over independence.
- True sovereignty is expensive; trusted interdependence may be the more realistic goal.
Reflection: unpacking the paradox
When I first tried to understand this topic, I imagined sovereignty as a kind of fenced garden. You own it, you decide who enters.
But the more I read, the more I realised: Europe’s digital garden shares its plumbing with the rest of the world.
The servers are often American, the chips Taiwanese, the code open-source, the data cables global. Trying to be “fully sovereign” in that context feels like insisting you can live off the grid in a city apartment.
So what does the EU really mean?
In Brussels jargon, sovereignty has quietly evolved into “open strategic autonomy.” The idea isn’t to do everything alone but to retain the freedom to act, even inside complex systems of interdependence.
That makes sense politically.
But economically, it’s tricky. Because sovereignty has a price.
Rob Hoeijmakers
When sovereignty meets economics
If you take sovereignty too literally, you end up like North Korea: self-reliant, but poor and cut off.
Economies thrive on scale, trade, and shared infrastructure, exactly the things that limit sovereignty.
This tension runs straight through the EU’s “Cloud Sovereignty Framework.”
The system gives each provider a “sovereignty score” based on eight criteria:
documentation, resilience, supply-chain control, and so on.
But here’s the twist: legal control and jurisdiction count for only 10 percent of the total.
So the best-performing, most “sovereign” platforms, on paper, are often the same U.S. hyperscalers the EU worries about.
That’s the paradox in spreadsheet form.
The hyperscaler dilemma
Europe depends on these U.S. giants for cost-effective cloud services, yet fears their legal reach.
Under American law, U.S. companies can be forced to hand over data stored anywhere in the world.
So Brussels doesn’t want to ban them, it wants to domesticate them: through data boundaries, local trustees, and compliance layers.
The tone is cooperative but cautious:
“We need their technology, but we can’t be hostage to it.”
It’s a relationship that feels less like divorce and more like couples therapy.
This is beyond parody: the EU has come up with a "cloud sovereignty framework" to make EU tech more sovereign and they've notably devised a "sovereignty score" to determine whether a particular cloud provider is sovereign or not (which will then determine if they get government… https://t.co/EqLrN5Ht28
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) October 30, 2025
Learning as I go
The more I read, the more I realise that sovereignty isn’t a technical state but it’s a state of mind.
It’s about awareness of where your dependencies lie, and willingness to act if one of them becomes risky.
That’s true for Europe, but also for companies and even individuals building on foreign digital foundations.
Maybe the goal isn’t pure autonomy, but resilient interdependence, a Europe that knows its limits, diversifies its risks, and keeps the agency to choose.
Closing: sovereignty without fences
If sovereignty is about freedom, then the question is not how high we can build our fences, but how well we can manage the shared systems that keep us alive.
Europe’s project, as I now see it, isn’t to stand alone, but to stay movable, to remain a player with options in a world of entanglements.
That, to me, feels like a more grown-up kind of sovereignty:
not ownership of everything, but ownership of your choices.
Jacques Cheminat
Rob Hoeijmakers
Rob Hoeijmakers