Ministers and senior officials from across the European Union are in Berlin today for a high-level Summit on European Digital Sovereignty, co-hosted by Germany and France and held at the EUREF Campus in the south of the city.
The meeting, chaired politically by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron, brings together delegations from 23 countries alongside EU institutions, industry and civil society.
The summit was first announced in the joint Franco-German economic agenda earlier this year as a flagship project to “strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty”, with a specific focus on secure infrastructure, cloud and data, and the governance of artificial intelligence. Berlin and Paris framed the gathering as a starting point for more coordinated European investment in strategic technologies, with a view to aligning EU funding instruments and national programmes behind common priorities.
Germany’s Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, Karsten Wildberger, and France’s Minister for Economics, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Roland Lescure, opened the proceedings, setting out the main strands of discussion for the day. Alongside them are ministers with digital, economic and telecoms portfolios from a wide range of member states, including Finland’s transport and communications minister Lulu Ranne, Spain’s digital transformation minister Óscar López, and regional digital leaders from Germany. Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen represents the European Commission at the event.
A central theme is how Europe intends to regulate and deploy artificial intelligence. The Berlin meeting takes place on the eve of the Commission’s “digital omnibus” package, which is expected to propose adjustments to existing rules, including the General Data Protection Regulation, and streamline parts of the EU’s digital rulebook. Several governments are pressing for a more “innovation-friendly” approach to AI while maintaining existing standards on privacy, security and fundamental rights.
Cloud sovereignty and control over critical infrastructure form the second major pillar of the summit. European leaders have repeatedly highlighted the EU’s heavy reliance on non-European cloud providers, with US hyperscalers accounting for well over half of the cloud market in Europe and Chinese vendors present in sensitive network layers. Germany has already signalled its intention to phase out Huawei components from national telecoms networks, while both Berlin and Paris are advocating stricter sovereignty criteria in public procurement of digital services.
In this context, initiatives such as Gaia-X are being presented in Berlin as technical building blocks for a more sovereign European data and cloud infrastructure. Gaia-X aims to create federated, interoperable data spaces in which users can retain control over how their data are stored and processed, providing a framework for secure cloud and AI applications that comply with EU rules and values. Officials view these projects as part of a broader effort to reduce dependency on extra-EU platforms without closing the European market.
Secure digital infrastructure and resilience against cyber threats are also high on the agenda. The organisers describe digital sovereignty not only as a question of industrial policy but also as a prerequisite for maintaining democratic control over core infrastructure and preventing external interference. Side discussions in Berlin touch on the security of 5G and future networks, open-source components in critical systems and the protection of public-sector digital services against espionage and sabotage.
Industry and start-up representatives are using the summit to argue for clearer and more predictable rules. In the run-up to Berlin, coalitions of European start-ups and venture capital firms warned that fragmented implementation of EU digital legislation and overlapping national requirements risk undermining competitiveness and pushing high-growth companies towards foreign markets. They have called for more unified digital regulation, easier access to late-stage funding and a stronger European public-sector demand for home-grown cloud and AI solutions.
Around the summit, a dense programme of side events in Berlin reflects the breadth of the debate. Think-tanks and foundations are launching a European Network for Technological Resilience and Sovereignty, aimed at pooling analysis and policy proposals on long-term industrial and governance questions. Other meetings focus on criteria for “sovereign” cloud procurement, talent and skills in the European software ecosystem, and the democratic implications of digital dependency.
Members of the European Parliament from several political groups have also coordinated their messaging around the summit, presenting joint demands for a more coherent digital strategy that supports both competitiveness and rights protection. Their interventions highlight concerns about surveillance, data exploitation and market concentration, while backing efforts to build interoperable, European-controlled infrastructure.
The Berlin summit is not expected to produce detailed legislative proposals, but participating governments aim to agree a common political line on Europe’s digital direction, including language on cloud and data sovereignty, AI governance and secure infrastructure. Any conclusions are likely to feed into forthcoming Commission initiatives and Council debates over the coming months, as the EU attempts to convert the broad notion of “digital sovereignty” into a set of concrete policies, projects and investment decisions.
