A global Microsoft outage affecting millions across 74 countries for 24 hours has reignited discussions on EU digital sovereignty and infrastructure concentration, as industry leaders debate the risks of relying heavily on centralized foreign cloud platforms.
European dependency was also at the heart of the intervention of Arthur Mens, CEO of Mistral, at the first meeting of EU leaders on artificial intelligence. Mens said that only 20% of digital services in Europe operate on a European basis. In his view, the money spent on technologies from foreign companies, mainly American and Chinese, could be directed to European infrastructure and research and development. He did not specifically link his statements to the Microsoft shutdown.
The issue concerns, among other things, the control of cloud infrastructure, microchips and artificial intelligence models. Technological sovereignty is a priority of the second term of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and was high on the agenda of the meeting of the leaders of the 27 member states. After the summit in Dublin, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on the X platform that European independence must be built in Europe and not outsourced. He added that Europe has the resources to compete in artificial intelligence, but it has no time to waste. An EU diplomat involved in the talks called for faster licensing and more investment.
Proposals for changes to public procurement were made both by Finnish MEP Aura Sala, who called for support for European technology companies, and in Germany. Social Democrat MEP Johannes Setzl put the spotlight on public procurement and the resilience of digital systems: as he said, sovereignty is also judged by whether they can continue to operate during an interruption. Sebastian Tofaletti, secretary general of the Digital SME Alliance, called the Microsoft incident a reminder of the systemic risk posed by the concentration of critical infrastructure in a few global groups.
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A similar call was made in Britain. Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat technology spokesperson, called for urgent action to reduce reliance on a small group of companies.
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