The cause is clear: Europe, in digital matters, is failing. In 2014, for the first time, the Commission led by Jean-Claude. Junker nevertheless made digital one of its 10 priorities. Since then, not a week has passed without the European Union (EU), intoxicated by its regulatory power, adopting a new text. Not a week without a new incantation in favor of European digital sovereignty which remains ghostly. Not a week without the strict affirmation of European values on the internet. The result? Whatever the metrics, Europe’s gap, whether in cloud, AI, microprocessors, has never been greater.
Faced with this bitter failure, what is Europe doing? As political science confirms, and as in so many other areas where it fails, it seeks enemies whom it makes responsible for its setbacks. Is she incapable of defending herself? Donald Trump is responsible for this. She is, beyond words, divided on Ukraine, and in reality on the relationship with Russia? Bart de Wever took over from Viktor Orbán to take on the bad role of the cause of discord between Europeans. The technology sector is emblematic of the EU’s permanent discard game to hide its inadequacies. For a quarter of a century, European action in digital matters has not consisted of finding solutions to its problems within itself, but rather of making people believe that it is by attacking others that it will become a digital power. Let us judge.
At the beginning of the 2000s, European Commissioner Nelly Kroes understood the political interest she would have in attacking the largest company in the world: Microsoft. At the service of this political ambition, she put the most powerful of European policies, competition policy, with a first decision condemning the Redmond giant in 2004. In doing so she opened a real crusade against competition. big tech American. Most of European policy in terms of abuse of a dominant position and to a lesser extent state aid has, for twenty years, been directed towards one goal: destroying the GAFAMs by making people believe that, mechanically, European GAFAMS would replace them. The EU has thus increased massive financial sanctions (tax adjustment of 13 billion for Apple, etc.). It made massive use of its normative power (Digital Market Act- DMA; Digital Services Act- DSA; IA Act etc.).
Now Europe, less and less capable of disguising its failures, seems to have found a new “supervillain”: Elon Musk. It is true that he accumulates sins: entrepreneur, rich, visionary, right-wing. That’s a lot for one man. We must stop here on two singular episodes.
Europe is right to enforce its rules but it must do so without underhanded discrimination
First, the conflict around Twitter becoming X. In the summer of 2024, European Commissioner Thierry Breton strongly opposed Twitter, in the name of European values on the internet, as defended by the recent DSA. For Europe, unable to admit that what it criticized Elon Musk for was his support for Donald Trump, Twitter had contravened European law. However, this has been forgotten, it was not the Republican Trump administration which supported Elon Musk against the EU. And for good reason: this crisis occurred 4 months with the presidential election of November 2024. It was the Biden administration, although powerfully hostile to the boss of Twitter, which reminded Europe that for America, freedom of opinion was not a subject of banter. This crisis was not lost on everyone: Ursula von der Leyen found her pretext to brutally dismiss the French commissioner.
Now the EU has found a new angle of attack. This is not Twitter, but SpaceX. And the European mantra is not democratic values, but sovereignty. On May 26, the Commission announced that it would reallocate two thirds of the so-called 2 GHz bands for mobile satellite services (MSS), hitherto operated by American companies (Viasat and EchoStar), to European companies, excluding, among others, SpaceX.
If the objective is to favor European players, it is laudable. A European offer capable of replacing current services must still exist. The question is not trivial: should we remember that more than 50,000 Starlink terminals are deployed on the Ukrainian front lines and that Starlink also operates in Ukraine partly from stations located in Poland and Ukraine? Put more simply: do we want, even though competition on merits is the heart of the European reactor, to discriminate against actors under the pretext that they are American, thus reducing, in fact, Europe’s capacity to help Ukraine?
Let us understand clearly: Europe is right to enforce its rules but it must do so without making sneaky discriminations which, precisely, would amount to denying its values. Above all, it must renounce the contradictory injunctions which consist of wanting one thing and its opposite. In space, digital and military matters, it is a reality which annoys but which must be taken into account; it cannot, in many areas, and for a long time, do without America.
*The Arvernes are a French group of senior civil servants, teachers, essayists and entrepreneurs created in 2012.
