In 2024, former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi produced a report on European competitiveness in the global market. It emphasized the EU’s need to develop its own digital infrastructure—particularly in AI—as a way to reduce reliance on US-based Big Tech companies, which currently dominate the EU market. This concentration has been met with concern, as it not only squeezes out local competitors, but also creates a lock-in effect where switching systems becomes costly and complex.
These concerns gave rise to many of the EU’s recent digital regulations such as the GDPR, which legally enforces how foreign companies process Europeans’ personal data. But risks still remain. For example, Big Tech’s dominance in the region means that European users and institutions mostly operate within systems reflecting US cultural norms and values. This manifests in platforms’ content moderation policies, algorithmic ranking systems, and how content is monetized—all of which can influence public discourse, limiting the EU’s ability to align its digital spaces with its own cultural or political values.
Moreover, Big Tech’s dominance means that it has significant leverage in policy disputes. Such was the case in Canada in 2023, when Meta blocked news outlets on its platforms as a result of negotiations that were not in its favour.
The fact that Big Tech can shape how and whether essential services operate within a country means that digital sovereignty is also tightly intertwined with geopolitics. These concerns have intensified in the EU amid strained relations with the Trump administration, especially after the President’s volatile tariff sanctions and annexation threats towards Greenland.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the EU has made digital sovereignty a top priority.
The same is true for Estonia.
… the country heavily relies on cloud infrastructure and other foreign software, especially from the US. These come with expensive licensing costs—around €6 million per year for the roughly 15,000 government, state and subordinate agencies' employees' workstations, according to ERR.
Being a digital society, the country heavily relies on cloud infrastructure and other foreign software, especially from the US. These come with expensive licensing costs—around €6 million per year for the roughly 15,000 government, state and subordinate agencies' employees' workstations, according to ERR. However, State IT Center (RIT) director Ergo Tars told ERR that embracing alternative systems will not eliminate these costs, as they will require maintenance, support, and training.
On top of these concerns, digital sovereignty in Estonia is also a matter of national security, given its proximity to Russia amidst the ongoing war in Ukraine. “This has made digital sovereignty a matter of national survival, not just IT policy,” said Liisa Pakosta, Estonia’s minister of justice and digital affairs, to CNBC.
Estonia is beginning to explore alternatives to Big Tech. Pilot projects are expected to test various options this fall, which might include “LibreOffice or OpenOffice with a Linux distribution, meaning Windows could not be used” (ERR).
However, for the time being, there is no replacement for the digital ecosystems unpinned by Big Tech. The solution should not be isolationism, since that stands in direct contrast to the ethos of an open and collaborative internet. Instead, pursuing digital sovereignty should be about reducing strategic dependencies, strengthening local capacity, and building systems that offer greater control without cutting off global connection.
This article was written by Natalie Jenkins as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.
