European technological sovereignty under debate: "In the US everything works better in technological terms"

BarcelonaEuropean technological sovereignty has been a hot topic in recent discussions within the technology sector. This was also the case at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), which this year offered several conferences dedicated to the issue. Faced with a situation in which the United States and China dominate the technological race and the foundations of the global order are changing, strategic sovereignty is becoming a crucial challenge for governments and industries. And where does Europe stand?

In a conference entitled What does strategic technological sovereignty mean for Europe?Telefónica's CEO, Marc Murtra; Eutelsal's CEO, Jean-François Fallacher; and Deutsche Telekom's CEO, Tim Höttges, along with GSMA Director General Vivek Badrinath, discussed how Europe can scale innovation, modernize essential infrastructure, and strengthen critical industries. Although Badrinath opened the conference calling for an optimistic outlook, the conclusions were more skeptical and critical: over-regulation, bureaucracy, and a lack of investment from Europe are slowing progress. In this regard, Telefónica's Chairman, Marc Murtra, asserted that improving European competitiveness requires three things: larger companies, technology protection regulations, and greater speed. "We need to scale; larger companies that take more risks, attract more talent, and have greater technological investments," he began. "We also need to change and adapt the regulations: the Draghi report says so, the Letta report says so, everyone is saying so; we need simplification and prioritization, we must prioritize the creation of technology," he added. "And the third thing we need is speed; we are seeing profound changes very quickly," Murtra concluded.

Höttges was the most forceful of the three, stating that "in the last year" things in Europe in terms of innovation "have gotten worse." "For a year now, nothing has improved; all the European ambitions that existed, which are based on incentivizing investment... absolutely nothing has happened. A year later, our industry is investing 2% less in Europe than a year ago, and Europe is falling behind the US and China again. We have more regulation, we are falling further behind," and we are far behind; the Deutsche Telekom representative added.

"Everything works better in the US"

"What we're proposing is that we be allowed to scale up as part of a social contract, and that we invest in technology," Murtra stated. "This is the priority and what we need to offer better services, with higher quality and greater efficiency. And, with that, we'll be able to directly influence pricing," the Telefónica executive asserted.

"If Europe wants to be sovereign, we need digital products: very expensive and difficult-to-replicate products, such as cybersecurity products [...] and also AI products, not just the infrastructure, but the products themselves," Murtra emphasized. "Because if anyone believes that we as Europeans will have access to the digital products that will be necessary in ten years to do things like work in the pharmaceutical industry, we are naive," she concluded. She also offered self-criticism: "We can't place all the blame on politicians either; industry leaders must also assume some responsibility: we haven't invested enough in..." cloud “[cloud], because we didn’t have enough resources,” admitted the CEO of Deutsche Telekom. “Now we’ve realized that and decided to take the lead: to launch an industrial AI cloud in Germany,” explained Höttges. “Now all we need is demand. But is the government committed enough to put its data into this tool? We haven’t seen that yet; but if governments don’t do it, this won’t work,” the executive stated. “An initial push is necessary; that’s how Amazon started, first with government support and then growing,” he asserted. “Everything works better in the US than in Europe, and it makes me envious, to be honest,” he lamented.