Funders’ briefing: Digital sovereignty

Europe’s tech policy arena has shifted in the past year to focus on who controls the technologies that Europeans use and rely on across all areas of life – from transportation to healthcare, public services to social media. Facing pressure to relax its tech regulations and anxious about heavy dependence on US tech giants as transatlantic relations fracture, policymakers are looking for ways to achieve regulatory, political and economic sovereignty for Europe.  

In our second funders’ briefing paper, the European AI & Society Fund sets out how funders can support civil society to influence digital sovereignty in Europe. With insight from the public interest field, we highlight how the debate currently focuses on economic and national security concerns, positioning national tech champions as an alternative. This risks creating AI with a ‘made in Europe’ label, but which follows Big Tech’s paradigm, causing harm to people, society and the planet. 

Funders can help build the power of public interest groups to engage in and shape this discussion to leverage the potential this moment offers to seed an alternative vision for AI.