EC’s Tech Sovereignty Package – UPDATE**

While legislative proposals are always the product of a compromise in the EC setting, it was clear that the EC team were subject to unprecedented levels of pushback from hyperscalers and US government representatives, weaponizing all sorts of propaganda to scare the bureaucracy into submission – from waving the threat of WTO repercussions to tariff reprisals. Steering even just a portion of European public sector demand for tech services to European suppliers was not likely to make a massive difference in volume/value terms, but was going to send an important signal (even to the private sector) that one way or another, the EC was behind the need to use “demand” also as an industrial policy tool to power up the European tech industry. The title of the article preserves its ambitious framing (“Promoting Open Source solutions and Open Source first”), but in the body of the text Member States are only required to “take the necessary measures to encourage” public sector bodies to use and facilitate the reuse of Open Source components, “when building their cloud and AI ecosystem or stack”, “taking into account functionalities, including security, total cost, and other relevant, duly justified objective criteria”. The adopted CADA text imposes on no entity an obligation to make available under an Open Source licence a software financed with public money; it only defines the cataloguing modality when such a decision is taken, where applicable pursuant to other pre-existing European instruments (Interoperable Europe Act, internal doctrines, etc.). That said, the EuroStack Industry Initiative has emphasised from the start that while public policy can be potentially useful – sending signals and creating frameworks – bureaucracies and public institutions are not going to build us a European tech industry. “EuroStack” is our original idea for a European Industrial Policy initiative bringing together tech, governance and funding for Europe-focused investment to build and adopt a suite of digital infrastructures: from connectivity to cloud computing, AI and digital platforms.