BRUSSELS — The fight between Brussels and Washington over tech rules is officially high politics — and shows no sign of stopping in 2026.  Last week the United States sanctioned a former top European Commission official, alleging he was a “mastermind” of the bloc’s content moderation law. The travel ban was a sign the Trump administration is ramping up its attacks on what it calls Europe’s censorship regime.  The pressure puts Brussels between a rock and a hard place.  EU leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and European Parliament lawmakers dismissed the U.S. move as intimidation and even suggested considering counteraction, ramping up calls for Brussels to hold its ground and reduce the EU’s reliance on U.S. technology.  It suggests that U.S. pressure on the EU’s tech rules is now a full-blown transatlantic dispute of its own, rather than just a sideshow to trade talks, and requires an appropriate response. “The real response must be political,” said Italian Social Democrat lawmaker Brando Benifei, the European Parliament’s lead on relations with the U.S., in response to the American sanctions.  “Our sleepwalking leaders must wake up, because there’s no time left.” While the Commission condemned the U.S. move, its President Ursula von der Leyen offered a muted response, highlighting only the importance of freedom of speech in a post on X. ONLY THE START The U.S. move to impose a travel ban on Frenchman Thierry Breton, who served as the EU’s internal market chief from 2019 to 2024 and led the drafting of the Digital Services Act, marked an acceleration in the U.S. campaign against the EU’s tech rules.  Breton has borne the brunt of criticism over the EU’s tech rules, particularly following his public spat with U.S. President Donald Trump’s one-time ally, X owner Elon Musk. The tech billionaire appears to be back in the president’s good books after a bitter falling-out over the summer. A letter Breton sent in August 2024 to warn Musk ahead of an upcoming livestream featuring then-presidential candidate Trump was repeatedly shared by Trump loyalists after Breton was sanctioned.  Another four individuals were sanctioned, including two from German NGO HateAid, which Berlin’s regulators have said is a “trusted” organization to flag illegal content like hate speech.   The U.S. had previously mainly threatened the EU over its tech rules, or invoked them when the EU demanded concessions from Washington such as lower steel and aluminum tariffs in early December. But after the Commission crossed the Rubicon in early December and imposed its first-ever Digital Services Act fine on Musk’s X, Washington responded with the travel bans.  The EU executive has repeatedly said its enforcement of the DSA is not political, yet Washington insists it is nothing but.  Threats of travel restrictions from the U.S. have been trickling in since the summer, but the Commission has declined to say how it plans to protect its officials.  Both sides still have room — and face internal calls to escalate — in what is now a full-blown transatlantic dispute over the limits of free speech.  Just earlier this month, when the U.S. announced its intention to require social media disclosures from people hoping to enter the country on temporary visas, Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho insisted these were only plans and declined to comment on how it would protect its staff working on the DSA.  Pressured by journalists about the impact on staff working on digital rules, she said tech spokesperson Thomas Regnier had no plans to visit the U.S.  Still, the sanctions announced by the State Department may be only a warning shot.  The measures announced last week targeted a former Commission official, not someone currently in office. The U.S. still has many other tools in its arsenal, which U.S. politicians say it should use.  Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmitt called for the use of Magnitsky sanctions, which are financial measures that can cause significant operational headaches including asset freezes and barring U.S. entities from trading with sanctioned entities.  While they are normally reserved for serious human rights violations like war crimes or the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration has already used them to go after another person deemed to be a modern agent of censorship.  In July, the Treasury and State departments announced Magnitsky sanctions against Brazilian Judge Alexandre de Moraes, including for suppressing “speech that is protected under the U.S. Constitution.”  De Moraes has drawn the same criticism as EU officials from the Trump administration and its allies, including Musk.  COUNTERACTION The Commission also faces heat from the other side, with EU country leaders and European Parliament lawmakers demanding a more political response to the situation.  The EU’s tech rules have been a regular topic of debate at the Parliament’s plenary sessions, and several lawmakers have indicated the U.S. travel restrictions could be on the agenda for the January session.  German Greens lawmaker Sergey Lagodinsky said the EU should not rule out considering some sort of counteraction.  “Europe must respond. It must raise pressure in the trade talks and consider measures against senior tech executives who actively support the U.S. administration agenda,” he said in a statement shared with POLITICO.  Breton himself accused the EU institutions of being “very weak” in an interview with TF1. Just before the break, in a rare joint address, MEPs from four political groups called for stronger action against U.S. Big Tech companies.  “The small fine against X is a good beginning, but it comes definitely too late, and it’s absolutely not enough,” said German Greens MEP Alexandra Geese. The socialists have tried to kick off a special inquiry committee to figure out if the Commission is strong enough in enforcing the DSA, although support from other groups is lacking.  The Commission has yet to announce its decisions on the meatier part of its DSA probe into X and other platforms.  Others see the U.S. sanctions as another warning to reduce reliance on U.S. technology and build up the EU’s own technological capacity.  “Lovely, but not enough,” Aurore Lalucq, a French MEP and chair of the economic affairs committee, quipped in response to the Commission’s condemnation of the U.S. sanctions.  “We need to build our independence now. It starts with our payment systems, a sovereign cloud, and an industrial policy for digital infrastructure and social networks.”

Venture capitalist Finn Murphy believes world leaders could soon resort to deflecting sunlight into space if the Earth gets unbearably hot. That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles. Murphy isn’t rooting for climate catastrophe. But with global temperatures soaring and the political will to limit climate change waning, Stardust “can be worth tens of billions of dollars,” he said. “It would be definitely better if we lost all our money and this wasn’t necessary,” said Murphy, the 33-year-old founder of Nebular, a New York investment fund named for a vast cloud of space dust and gas. Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions. Solar geoengineering investors are generally young, pragmatic and imaginative — and willing to lean into the adventurous side of venture capitalism. They often shrug off the concerns of scientists who argue it’s inherently risky to fund the development of potentially dangerous technologies through wealthy investors who could only profit if the planet-cooling systems are deployed. “If the technology works and the outcomes are positive without really catastrophic downstream impacts, these are trillion-dollar market opportunities,” said Evan Caron, a co-founder of the energy-focused venture firm Montauk Capital. “So it’s a no-brainer for an investor to take a shot at some of these.” More than 50 financial firms, wealthy individuals and government agencies have collectively provided more than $115.8 million to nine startups whose technology could be used to limit sunlight, according to interviews with VCs, tech company founders and analysts, as well as private investment data analyzed by POLITICO’s E&E News. That pool of funders includes Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, and four other investment groups that have more than $1 billion of assets under management. Of the total amount invested in the geoengineering sector, $75 million went to Stardust, or nearly 65 percent. The U.S.-Israeli startup is developing reflective particles and the means to spray and monitor them in the stratosphere, some 11 miles above the planet’s surface. At least three other climate-intervention companies have also raked in at least $5 million. The cash infusion is a bet on planet-cooling technologies that many political leaders, investors and environmentalists still consider taboo. In addition to having unknown side effects, solar geoengineering could expose the planet to what scientists call “termination shock,” a scenario in which global temperatures soar if the cooling technologies fail or are suddenly abandoned. Still, the funding surge for geoengineering companies pales in comparison to the billions of dollars being put toward artificial intelligence. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has raised $62.5 billion in 2025 alone, according to investment data compiled by PitchBook. The investment pool for solar geoengineering startups is relatively shallow in part because governments haven’t determined how they would regulate the technology — something Stardust is lobbying to change. As a result, the emerging sector is seen as too speculative for most venture capital firms, according to Kim Zou, the CEO of Sightline Climate, a market intelligence firm. VCs mostly work on behalf of wealthy individuals, as well as pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors. “It’s still quite a niche set of investors that are even thinking about or looking at the geoengineering space,” Zou said. “The climate tech and energy tech investors we speak to still don’t really see there being an investable opportunity there, primarily because there’s no commercial market for it today.” AEROSOLS IN THE STRATOSPHERE Stardust and its investors are banking on signing contracts with one or more governments that could deploy its solar geoengineering system as soon as the end of the decade. Those investors include Lowercarbon Capital, a climate-focused firm co-founded by billionaire VC Chris Sacca, and Exor, the holding company of an Italian industrial dynasty and perhaps the most mainstream investment group to back a sunlight reflection startup. Even Stardust’s supporters acknowledge that the company is far from a sure bet. “It’s unique in that there is not currently demand for this solution,” said Murphy, whose firm is also supporting out-there startups seeking to build robots and data centers in space. “You have to go and create the product in order to potentially facilitate the demand.” Lowercarbon partner Ryan Orbuch said the firm would see a return on its Stardust investment only “in the context of an actual customer who can actually back many years of stable, safe deployment.” Exor, another Stardust investor, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Other startups are trying to develop commercial markets for solar geoengineering. Make Sunsets, a company funded by billionaire VC Tim Draper, releases sulfate-filled weather balloons that pop when they reach the stratosphere. It sells cooling credits to individuals and corporations based on the theory that the sulfates can reliably reduce warming. There are questions, however, about the science and economics underpinning the credit system of Make Sunsets, according to the investment bank Jeffries. “A cooling credit market is unlikely to be viable,” the bank said in a May 2024 note to clients. That’s because the temperature reductions produced by sulfate aerosols vary by altitude, location and season, the note explained. And the warming impacts of carbon dioxide emissions last decades — much longer than any cooling that would be created from a balloon’s worth of sulfate. Make Sunsets didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company has previously attracted the attention of regulators in the U.S. and Mexico, who have claimed it began operating without the necessary government approvals. Draper Associates says on its website that it’s “shaping a future where the impossible becomes everyday reality.” The firm has previously backed successful consumer tech firms like Tesla, Skype and Hotmail. “It is getting hotter in the Summer everywhere,” Tim Draper said in an email. “We should be encouraging every solution. I love this team, and the science works.” THE NEXT FRONTIER One startup is pursuing space-based solar geoengineering. EarthGuard is attempting to build a series of large sunlight deflectors that would be positioned between the sun and the planet, some 932,000 miles from the Earth. The company did not respond to emailed questions. Other space companies are considering geoengineering as a side project. That includes Gama, a French startup that’s designing massive solar sails that could be used for deep space travel or as a planetary sunshade, and Ethos Space, a Los Angeles company with plans to industrialize the moon. Both companies are part of an informal research network established by the Planetary Sunshade Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for the development of a trillion-dollar parasol for the globe. The network mainly brings together collaborators on the sidelines of space industry conferences, according to Gama CEO Andrew Nutter. “We’re willing to contribute something if we realize it’s genuinely necessary and it’s a better solution than other solutions” to the climate challenge, Nutter said of the space shade concept. “But our business model does not depend on it. If you have dollar signs hanging next to something, that can bias your decisions on what’s best for the planet.” Nutter said Gama has raised about $5 million since he co-founded the company in 2020. Its investors include Possible Ventures, a German VC firm that’s also financing a nuclear fusion startup and says on its website that the firm is “relentlessly optimistic — choosing to focus on the possibilities rather than obsess over the risks.” Possible Ventures did not respond to a request for comment. Sequoia-backed Reflect Orbital is another space startup that’s exploring solar geoengineering as a potential moneymaker. The company based near Los Angeles is developing a network of satellite mirrors that would direct sunlight down to the Earth at night for lighting industrial sites or, eventually, producing solar energy. Its space mirrors, if oriented differently, could also be used for limiting the amount of sun rays that reach the planet. “It’s not so much a technological limitation as much as what has the highest, best impact. It’s more of a business decision,” said Ally Stone, Reflect Orbital’s chief strategy officer. “It’s a matter of looking at each satellite as an opportunity and whether, when it’s over a specific geography, that makes more sense to reflect sunlight towards or away from the Earth.” Reflect Orbital has raised nearly $28.7 million from investors including Lux Capital, a firm that touts its efforts to “turn sci-fi into sci-fact” and has invested in the autonomous defense systems companies Anduril and Saildrone.” Sequoia and Lux didn’t respond to requests for comment. The startup hopes to send its first satellite into space next summer, according to Stone. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose aerospace company already has an estimated fleet of more than 8,800 internet satellites in orbit, has also suggested using the circling network to limit sunlight. “A large solar-powered AI satellite constellation would be able to prevent global warming by making tiny adjustments in how much solar energy reached Earth,” Musk wrote on X last month. Neither he nor SpaceX responded to an emailed request for comment. DON’T CALL IT GEOENGINEERING Other sunlight-reflecting startups are entering the market — even if they’d rather not be seen as solar geoengineering companies. Arctic Reflections is a two-year-old company that wants to reduce global warming by increasing Arctic sea ice, which doesn’t absorb as much heat as open water. The Dutch startup hasn’t yet pursued outside investors. “We see this not necessarily as geo-engineering, but rather as climate adaptation,” CEO Fonger Ypma said in an email. “Just like in reforestation projects, people help nature in growing trees, our idea is that we would help nature in growing ice.” The main funder of Arctic Reflections is the British government’s independent Advanced Research and Invention Agency. In May, ARIA awarded $4.41 million to the company — more than four times what it had raised to that point. Another startup backed by ARIA is Voltitude, which is developing micro balloons to monitor geoengineering from the stratosphere. The U.K.-based company didn’t respond to a request for comment. Altogether, the British agency is supporting 22 geoengineering projects, only a handful of which involve startups. “ARIA is only funding fundamental research through this programme, and has not taken an equity stake in any geoengineering companies,” said Mark Symes, a program director at the agency. It also requires that all research it supports “must be published, including those that rule out approaches by showing they are unsafe or unworkable.” Sunscreen is a new startup that is trying to limit sunlight in localized areas. It was founded earlier this year by Stanford University graduate student Solomon Kim. “We are pioneering the use of targeted, precision interventions to mitigate the destructive impacts of heatwave on critical United States infrastructure,” Kim said in an email. But he was emphatic that “we are not geoengineering” since the cooling impacts it’s pursuing are not large scale. Kim declined to say how much had been raised by Sunscreen and from what sources. As climate change and its impacts continue to worsen, Zou of Sightline Climate expects more investors to consider solar geoengineering startups, including deep-pocketed firms and corporations interested in the technology. Without their help, the startups might not be able to develop their planet-cooling systems. “People are feeling like, well wait a second, our backs are kind of starting to get against the wall. Time is ticking, we’re not really making a ton of progress” on decarbonization, she said. “So I do think there’s a lot more questions getting asked right now in the climate tech and venture community around understanding it,” Zou said of solar geoengineering. “Some of these companies and startups and venture deals are also starting to bring more light into the space.” Karl Mathiesen contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — European banks and other finance firms should decrease their reliance on American tech companies for digital services, a top national supervisor has said. In an interview with POLITICO, Steven Maijoor, the Dutch central bank’s chair of supervision, said the “small number of suppliers” providing digital services to many European finance companies can pose a “concentration risk.” “If one of those suppliers is not able to supply, you can have major operational problems,” Maijoor said. The intervention comes as Europe’s politicians and industries grapple with the continent’s near-total dependence on U.S. technology for digital services ranging from cloud computing to software. The dominance of American companies has come into sharp focus following a decline in transatlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump. While the market for European tech services isn’t nearly as developed as in the U.S. — making it difficult for banks to switch — the continent “should start to try to develop this European environment” for financial stability and the sake of its economic success, Maijoor said. European banks being locked in to contracts with U.S. providers “will ultimately also affect their competitiveness,” Maijoor said. Dutch supervisors recently authored a report on the systemic risks posed by tech dependence in finance. Dutch lender Amsterdam Trade Bank collapsed in 2023 after its parent company was placed on the U.S. sanctions list and its American IT provider withdrew online data storage services, in one of the sharpest examples of the impact on companies that see their tech withdrawn. Similarly a 2024 outage of American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike highlighted the European finance sector’s vulnerabilities to operational risks from tech providers, the EU’s banking watchdog said in a post-mortem on the outage. In his intervention, Maijoor pointed to an EU law governing the operational reliability of banks — the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) — as one factor that may be worsening the problem. Those rules govern finance firms’ outsourcing of IT functions such as cloud provision, and designate a list of “critical” tech service providers subject to extra oversight, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle. DORA, and other EU financial regulation, may be “inadvertently nudging financial institutions towards the largest digital service suppliers,” which wouldn’t be European, Maijoor said. “If you simply look at quality, reliability, security … there’s a very big chance that you will end up with the largest digital service suppliers from outside Europe,” he said. The bloc could reassess the regulatory approach to beat the risks, Maijoor said. “DORA currently is an oversight approach, which is not as strong in terms of requirements and enforcement options as regular supervision,” he said. The Dutch supervisors are pushing for changes, writing that they are examining whether financial regulation and supervision in the EU creates barriers to choosing European IT providers, and that identified issues “may prompt policy initiatives in the European context.” They are asking EU governments and supervisors “to evaluate whether DORA sufficiently enhances resilience to geopolitical risks and, if not, to consider issuing further guidance,” adding they “see opportunities to strengthen DORA as needed,” including through more enforcement and more explicit requirements around managing geopolitical risks. Europe could also set up a cloud watchdog across industries to mitigate the risks of dependence on U.S. tech service providers, which are “also very important for other parts of the economy like energy and telecoms,” Maijoor said. “Wouldn’t there be a case for supervision more generally of these hyperscalers, cloud service providers, as they are so important for major parts of the economy?” The European Commission declined to respond.

This article is also available in French and German. President Donald Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO, belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent. The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s political leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.” “I think they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.” Trump matched that blunt, even abrasive, candor on European affairs with a sequence of stark pronouncements on matters closer to home: He said he would make support for immediately slashing interest rates a litmus test in his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. He said he could extend anti-drug military operations to Mexico and Colombia. And Trump urged conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both in their 70s, to stay on the bench. Trump’s comments about Europe come at an especially precarious moment in the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as European leaders express intensifying alarm that Trump may abandon Ukraine and its continental allies to Russian aggression. In the interview, Trump offered no reassurance to Europeans on that score and declared that Russia was obviously in a stronger position than Ukraine. Trump spoke on Monday at the White House with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation. POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Trump’s confident commentary on Europe presented a sharp contrast with some of his remarks on domestic matters in the interview. The president and his party have faced a series of electoral setbacks and spiraling dysfunction in Congress this fall as voters rebel against the high cost of living. Trump has struggled to deliver a message to meet that new reality: In the interview, he graded the economy’s performance as an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” insisted that prices were falling across the board and declined to outline a specific remedy for imminent spikes in health care premiums. Even amid growing turbulence at home, however, Trump remains a singular figure in international politics. In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy document, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues. In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.” Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.” Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. “I’d endorse,” Trump said. “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán,” the hard-right Hungarian prime minister Trump said he admired for his border-control policies. It was the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than electoral politics, that Trump appeared most immediately focused on. He claimed on Monday that he had offered a new draft of a peace plan that some Ukrainian officials liked, but that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed yet. “It would be nice if he would read it,” Trump said. Zelenskyy met with leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday and continued to voice opposition to ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal. The president said he put little stock in the role of European leaders in seeking to end the war: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.” In a fresh challenge to Zelenskyy, who appears politically weakened in Ukraine due to a corruption scandal, Trump renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” Latin America Even as he said he is pursuing a peace agenda overseas, Trump said he might further broaden the military actions his administration has taken in Latin America against targets it claims are linked to the drug trade. Trump has deployed a massive military force to the Caribbean to strike alleged drug runners and pressure the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. In the interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out putting American troops into Venezuela as part of an effort to bring down the strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump blames for exporting drugs and dangerous people to the United States. Some leaders on the American right have warned Trump that a ground invasion of Venezuela would be a red line for conservatives who voted for him in part to end foreign wars. “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump said of deploying ground troops, adding: “I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.” But the president said he would consider using force against targets in other countries where the drug trade is highly active, including Mexico and Colombia. “Sure, I would,” he said. Trump scarcely defended some of his most controversial actions in Latin America, including his recent pardon of the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a decades-long sentence in an American prison after being convicted in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy. Trump said he knew “very little” about Hernández except that he’d been told by “very good people” that the former Honduran president had been targeted unfairly by political opponents. “They asked me to do it and I said, I’ll do it,” Trump acknowledged, without naming the people who sought the pardon for Hernández. HEALTH CARE AND THE ECONOMY Asked to grade the economy under his watch, Trump rated it an overwhelming success: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” To the extent voters are frustrated about prices, Trump said the Biden administration was at fault: “I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.” The president is facing a forbidding political environment because of voters’ struggles with affordability, with about half of voters overall and nearly 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 saying in a recent POLITICO Poll that the cost of living was as bad as it had ever been in their lives. Trump said he could make additional changes to tariff policy to help lower the price of some goods, as he has already done, but he insisted overall that the trend on costs was in the right direction. “Prices are all coming down,” Trump said, adding: “Everything is coming down.” Prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index. Trump’s political struggles are shadowing his upcoming decision on a nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, a post that will shape the economic environment for the balance of Trump’s term. Asked if he was making support for slashing interest rates a litmus test for his Fed nominee, Trump answered with a quick “yes.” The most immediate threat to the cost of living for many Americans is the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans that were enacted by Democrats under former President Joe Biden and are set to expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to spike in 2026, and medical charities are already experiencing a marked rise in requests for aid even before subsidies expire. Trump has been largely absent from health policy negotiations in Washington, while Democrats and some Republicans supportive of a compromise on subsidies have run into a wall of opposition on the right. Reaching a deal — and marshaling support from enough Republicans to pass it — would likely require direct intervention from the president. Yet asked if he would support a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies while he works out a large-scale plan with lawmakers, Trump was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see,” he said, pivoting to an attack on Democrats for being too generous with insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act. A cloud of uncertainty surrounds the administration’s intentions on health care policy. In late November, the White House planned to unveil a proposal to temporarily extend Obamacare subsidies only to postpone the announcement. Trump has promised on and off for years to unveil a comprehensive plan for replacing Obamacare but has never done so. That did not change in the interview. “I want to give the people better health insurance for less money,” Trump said. “The people will get the money, and they’re going to buy the health insurance that they want.” Reminded that Americans are currently buying holiday gifts and drawing up household budgets for 2026 amid uncertainty around premiums, Trump shot back: “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.” SUPREME COURT Large swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda currently sit before the Supreme Court, with a generally sympathetic 6-3 conservative majority that has nevertheless thrown up some obstacles to the most brazen versions of executive power Trump has attempted to wield. Trump spoke with POLITICO several days after the high court agreed to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the automatic conferral of citizenship on people born in the United States. Trump is attempting to roll back that right and said it would be “devastating” if the court blocked him from doing so. If the court rules in his favor, Trump said, he had not yet considered whether he would try to strip citizenship from people who were born as citizens under current law. Trump broke with some members of his party who have been hoping that the court’s two oldest conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, might consider retiring before the midterm elections so that Trump can nominate another conservative while Republicans are guaranteed to control the Senate. The president said he’d rather Alito, 75, and Thomas, 77, the court’s most reliable conservative jurists, remain in place: “I hope they stay,” he said, “’cause I think they’re fantastic.”

The Dutch government has quietly removed Google tracking tools from job listings for its intelligence services over concerns that the data would expose aspirant spies to U.S. surveillance. The intervention would put an end to Google’s processing of the data of job seekers interested in applying to spy service jobs, after members of parliament in The Hague raised security concerns. The move comes at a moment when trust between the Netherlands and the United States is fraying. It reflects wider European unease — heightened by Donald Trump’s return to the White House — about American tech giants having access to some of their most sensitive government data. The heads of the AIVD and MIVD, the Netherlands’ civilian and military intelligence services, said in October that they were reviewing how to share information with American counterparts over political interference and human rights concerns. In the Netherlands, government vacancies are listed on a central online portal, which subsequently redirects applicants to specific institutions’ or agencies’ websites, including those of the security services. The government has now quietly pulled the plug on Google Analytics for intelligence-service postings, according to security expert Bert Hubert, who first raised the alarm about the trackers earlier this year. Hubert told POLITICO the job postings for intelligence services jobs no longer contained the same Google tracking technologies at least since November. The move was first reported by Follow the Money. The military intelligence service MIVD declined to comment. The interior ministry, which oversees the general intelligence service AIVD, did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. In a statement, Communications Manager for Google Mathilde Méchin said: “Businesses, not Google Analytics, own and control the data they collect and Google Analytics only processes it at their direction. This data can be deleted at any time.” “Any data sent to Google Analytics for measurement does not identify individuals, and we have strict policies against advertising based on sensitive information,” Méchin said. ‘FUTURE EMPLOYEES AT RISK’ Derk Boswijk, a center-right Dutch lawmaker, raised the alarm about the tracking of job applicants in parliamentary questions to the government in January. He said that while China and Russia have traditionally been viewed as the biggest security risks, it is unacceptable for any foreign government — allied or not — to have a view into Dutch intelligence recruitment. “I still see the U.S. as our most important ally,” Boswijk told POLITICO. “But to be honest, we’re seeing that the policies of the Trump administration and the European countries no longer necessarily align, and I think we should adapt accordingly.” The government told Boswijk in February it had enabled privacy settings on data gathered by Google. The government has yet to comment on Boswijk’s latest questions submitted in November. Hubert, the cybersecurity expert, said the concerns over tracking were justified. Even highly technical data like IP addresses, device fingerprints and browsing patterns can help foreign governments, including adversaries such as China, narrow down who might be seeking a job inside an intelligence agency, he said. “By leaking job applications so broadly, the Dutch intelligence agencies put their future employees at risk, while also harming their own interests,” said Hubert, adding it could discourage sought-after cybersecurity talent that agencies are desperate to attract. Hubert previously served on a watchdog committee overseeing intelligence agencies’ requests to use hacking tools, surveillance and wiretapping.  One open question raised by Dutch parliamentarians is how to gain control over the data that Google gathered on aspiring spies in past years. “I don’t know what happens with the data Google Analytics already has, that’s still a black box to me,” said Sarah El Boujdaini, a lawmaker for the centrist-liberal Democrats 66 party who oversees digital affairs. The episode is likely to add fuel to efforts to wean off U.S. technologies — which are taking place across Europe, as part of the bloc’s “technological sovereignty” drive. European Parliament members last month urged the institution to move away from U.S. tech services, in a letter to the president obtained by POLITICO. In the Netherlands, parliament members have urged public institutions to move away from digital infrastructure run by U.S. firms like Microsoft, over security concerns. “If we can’t even safeguard applications to our secret services, how do you think the rest is going?” Hubert asked. The country also hosts the International Criminal Court, where Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan previously lost access to his Microsoft-hosted email account after he was targeted with American sanctions over issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC in October confirmed to POLITICO it was moving away from using Microsoft Office applications to German-based openDesk.

When the Franco-German summit concluded in Berlin, Europe’s leaders issued a declaration with a clear ambition: strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty in an open, collaborative way. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s call for “Europe’s Independence Moment” captures the urgency, but independence isn’t declared — it’s designed. The pandemic exposed this truth. When Covid-19 struck, Europe initially scrambled for vaccines and facemasks, hampered by fragmented responses and overreliance on a few external suppliers. That vulnerability must never be repeated. True sovereignty rests on three pillars: diversity, resilience and autonomy. > True sovereignty rests on three pillars: diversity, resilience and autonomy. Diversity doesn’t mean pulling every factory back to Europe or building walls around markets. Many industries depend on expertise and resources beyond our borders. The answer is optionality, never putting all our eggs in one basket. Europe must enable choice and work with trusted partners to build capabilities. This risk-based approach ensures we’re not hostage to single suppliers or overexposed to nations that don’t share our values. Look at the energy crisis after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Europe’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas left economies vulnerable. The solution wasn’t isolation, it was diversification: boosting domestic production from alternative energy sources while sourcing from multiple markets. Optionality is power. It lets Europe pivot when shocks hit, whether in energy, technology, or raw materials. Resilience is the art of prediction. Every system inevitably has vulnerabilities. The key is pre-empting, planning, testing and knowing how to recover quickly. Just as banks undergo stress tests, Europe needs similar rigor across physical and digital infrastructure. That also means promoting interoperability between networks, redundant connectivity links (including space and subsea cables), stockpiling critical components, and contingency plans. Resilience isn’t theoretical. It’s operational readiness. Finally, Europe must exercise authority through robust frameworks, such as authorization schemes, local licensing and governance rooted in EU law. The question is how and where to apply this control. On sensitive data, for example, sovereignty means ensuring it’s held in Europe under European jurisdiction, without replacing every underlying technology component. Sovereign solutions shouldn’t shut out global players. Instead, they should guarantee that critical decisions and compliance remain under European authority. Autonomy is empowerment, limiting external interference or denial of service while keeping systems secure and accountable. But let’s be clear: Europe cannot replicate world-leading technologies, platforms or critical components overnight. While we have the talent, innovation and leading industries, Europe has fallen significantly behind in a range of key emerging technologies. > While we have the talent, innovation and leading industries, Europe has fallen > significantly behind in a range of key emerging technologies. For example, building fully European alternatives in cloud and AI would take decades and billions of euros, and even then, we’d struggle to match Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. Worse, turning inward with protectionist policies would only weaken the foundations that we now seek to strengthen. “Old wines in new bottles” — import substitution, isolationism, picking winners — won’t deliver competitiveness or security. Contrast that with the much-debated US Inflation Reduction Act. Its incentives and subsidies were open to EU companies, provided they invest locally, develop local talent and build within the US market. It’s not about flags, it’s about pragmatism: attracting global investments, creating jobs and driving innovation-led growth. So what’s the practical path? Europe must embrace ‘sovereignty done right’, weaving diversity, resilience and autonomy into the fabric of its policies. That means risk-based safeguards, strategic partnerships and investment in European capabilities while staying open to global innovation. Trusted European operators can play a key role: managing encryption, access control and critical operations within EU jurisdiction, while enabling managed access to global technologies. To avoid ‘sovereignty washing’, eligibility should be based on rigorous, transparent assessments, not blanket bans. The Berlin summit’s new working group should start with a common EU-wide framework defining levels of data, operational and technological sovereignty. Providers claiming sovereign services can use this framework to transparently demonstrate which levels they meet. Europe’s sovereignty will not come from closing doors. Sovereignty done right will come from opening the right ones, on Europe’s terms. Independence should be dynamic, not defensive — empowering innovation, securing prosperity and protecting freedoms. > Europe’s sovereignty will not come from closing doors. Sovereignty done right > will come from opening the right ones, on Europe’s terms. That’s how Europe can build resilience, competitiveness and true strategic autonomy in a vibrant global digital ecosystem.

Europe’s security does not depend solely on our physical borders and their defense. It rests on something far less visible, and far more sensitive: the digital networks that keep our societies, economies and democracies functioning every second of the day. > Without resilient networks, the daily workings of Europe would grind to a > halt, and so too would any attempt to build meaningful defense readiness. A recent study by Copenhagen Economics confirms that telecom operators have become the first line of defense in Europe’s security architecture. Their networks power essential services ranging from emergency communications and cross-border healthcare to energy systems, financial markets, transport and, increasingly, Europe’s defense capabilities. Without resilient networks, the daily workings of Europe would grind to a halt, and so too would any attempt to build meaningful defense readiness. This reality forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Europe cannot build credible defense capabilities on top of an economically strained, structurally fragmented telecom sector. Yet this is precisely the risk today. A threat landscape outpacing Europe’s defenses The challenges facing Europe are evolving faster than our political and regulatory systems can respond. In 2023 alone, ENISA recorded 188 major incidents, causing 1.7 billion lost user-hours, the equivalent of taking entire cities offline. While operators have strengthened their systems and outage times fell by more than half in 2024 compared with the previous year, despite a growing number of incidents, the direction of travel remains clear: cyberattacks are more sophisticated, supply chains more vulnerable and climate-related physical disruptions more frequent. Hybrid threats increasingly target civilian digital infrastructure as a way to weaken states. Telecom networks, once considered as technical utilities, have become a strategic asset essential to Europe’s stability. > Europe cannot deploy cross-border defense capabilities without resilient, > pan-European digital infrastructure. Nor can it guarantee NATO > interoperability with 27 national markets, divergent rules and dozens of > sub-scale operators unable to invest at continental scale. Our allies recognize this. NATO recently encouraged members to spend up to 1.5 percent of their GDP on protecting critical infrastructure. Secretary General Mark Rutte also urged investment in cyber defense, AI, and cloud technologies, highlighting the military benefits of cloud scalability and edge computing – all of which rely on high-quality, resilient networks. This is a clear political signal that telecom security is not merely an operational matter but a geopolitical priority. The link between telecoms and defense is deeper than many realize. As also explained in the recent Arel report, Much More than a Network, modern defense capabilities rely largely on civilian telecom networks. Strong fiber backbones, advanced 5G and future 6G systems, resilient cloud and edge computing, satellite connectivity, and data centers form the nervous system of military logistics, intelligence and surveillance. Europe cannot deploy cross-border defense capabilities without resilient, pan-European digital infrastructure. Nor can it guarantee NATO interoperability with 27 national markets, divergent rules and dozens of sub-scale operators unable to invest at continental scale. Fragmentation has become one of Europe’s greatest strategic vulnerabilities. The reform Europe needs: An investment boost for digital networks At the same time, Europe expects networks to become more resilient, more redundant, less dependent on foreign technology and more capable of supporting defense-grade applications. Security and resilience are not side tasks for telecom operators, they are baked into everything they do. From procurement and infrastructure design to daily operations, operators treat these efforts as core principles shaping how networks are built, run and protected. Therefore, as the Copenhagen Economics study shows, the level of protection Europe now requires will demand substantial additional capital. > It is unrealistic to expect world-class, defense-ready infrastructure to > emerge from a model that has become structurally unsustainable. This is the right ambition, but the economic model underpinning the sector does not match these expectations. Due to fragmentation and over-regulation, Europe’s telecom market invests less per capita than global peers, generates roughly half the return on capital of operators in the United States and faces rising costs linked to expanding security obligations. It is unrealistic to expect world-class, defense-ready infrastructure to emerge from a model that has become structurally unsustainable. A shift in policy priorities is therefore essential. Europe must place investment in security and resilience at the center of its political agenda. Policy must allow this reality to be reflected in merger assessments, reduce overlapping security rules and provide public support where the public interest exceeds commercial considerations. This is not state aid; it is strategic social responsibility. Completing the single market for telecommunications is central to this agenda. A fragmented market cannot produce the secure, interoperable, large-scale solutions required for modern defense. The Digital Networks Act must simplify and harmonize rules across the EU, supported by a streamlined governance that distinguishes between domestic matters and cross-border strategic issues. Spectrum policy must also move beyond national silos, allowing Europe to avoid conflicts with NATO over key bands and enabling coherent next-generation deployments. Telecom policy nowadays is also defense policy. When we measure investment gaps in digital network deployment, we still tend to measure simple access to 5G and fiber. However, we should start considering that — if security, resilience and defense-readiness are to be taken into account — the investment gap is much higher that the €200 billion already estimated by the European Commission. Europe’s strategic choice The momentum for stronger European defense is real — but momentum fades if it is not seized. If Europe fails to modernize and secure its telecom infrastructure now, it risks entering the next decade with a weakened industrial base, chronic underinvestment, dependence on non-EU technologies and networks unable to support advanced defense applications. In that scenario, Europe’s democratic resilience would erode in parallel with its economic competitiveness, leaving the continent more exposed to geopolitical pressure and technological dependency. > If Europe fails to modernize and secure its telecom infrastructure now, it > risks entering the next decade with a weakened industrial base, chronic > underinvestment, dependence on non-EU technologies and networks unable to > support advanced defense applications. Europe still has time to change course and put telecoms at the center of its agenda — not as a technical afterthought, but as a core pillar of its defense strategy. The time for incremental steps has passed. Europe must choose to build the network foundations of its security now or accept that its strategic ambitions will remain permanently out of reach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Connect Europe AISBL * The ultimate controlling entity is Connect Europe AISBL * The political advertisement is linked to advocacy on EU digital, telecom and industrial policy, including initiatives such as the Digital Networks Act, Digital Omnibus, and connectivity, cybersecurity, and defence frameworks aimed at strengthening Europe’s digital competitiveness. More information here.

Microsoft’s CEO said Monday that his company is increasingly looking to Europe as a key region for its artificial intelligence strategy, as the continent seeks to bolster digital independence from the United States and China. “We are investing in Germany, in the European Union with our capital, putting it at risk,” Satya Nadella said during an interview on the MD Meets podcast, hosted by Mathias Döpfner, the chair and CEO of Axel Springer, the German media group that owns POLITICO. “These are not AI factories or cloud factories that sit in the United States. They are in the continent and in the country,” he added. In the conversation, Nadella stressed that digital sovereignty is a critical consideration for any nation. “I think that every country, whether it’s at the European Union level or at the country level, like in Germany, I think sovereignty is an important consideration,” he said. “So every country would like to ensure that there is continuity of their supply, there is resilience in their supply. And there’s agency in which they operate. And that’s one of the reasons why we have made all these commitments.” Nadella said that true sovereignty goes beyond infrastructure. “The new chapter of sovereignty is … what is a German automaker or a German industrial company? How are they going to have their own AI factory and foundation model that is unique to them?” he said. “That is, to me, the true definition of sovereignty.” Nadella’s comments come as European leaders increasingly warn that the continent cannot afford to cede the “digital sphere” to the global superpowers of the U.S. and China without serious consequences. At the Digital Sovereignty Summit in Berlin on Nov. 18, Germany and France unveiled a series of initiatives aimed at strengthening European technological independence, spanning cloud services, AI and public procurement. Among the measures were commitments to favor European solutions in public contracts, safeguard European data from foreign surveillance and confront the market dominance of major U.S. cloud providers. “If we let the Americans and the Chinese have all of the champions, one thing is certain: we may have the best regulation in the world, but we won’t be regulating anything,” French President Emmanuel Macron warned. Nadella acknowledged China’s strength in human capital and open-source innovation but stressed the continued leadership of the U.S. “The United States still continues to lead, whether it’s on the AI systems or whether it is the frontier models or the AI products around the world,” he said. “It is not just the ingenuity of the American tech sector, but also the American tech stack being the most trusted tech stack in the world.” Nadella argued that Europe could emerge as a major winner in the global AI landscape if it focuses on actually implementing and spreading the technology across industries. “Quite frankly, the country that is going to really win is going to be the one that can scale up broadly on AI, use AI broadly in their economy, in their health sector, in their manufacturing sector, in the education sector, and grow their economy,” he said. “Germany or Europe could be the big winner as long as they do the hard work of actually getting the technology in, re-skilling, using that technology,” he added.

BRUSSELS — Wednesday’s election in the Netherlands should surely go down as one of the best days Europe’s centrists have enjoyed in years. Geert Wilders, the far-right populist who touted leaving the EU on his way to a shock victory in the 2023 election, lost nearly a third of his voters after 11 chaotic months for his Party for Freedom (PVV) in coalition.  At the same time, the fervently pro-European liberal Rob Jetten surged in the final days of the campaign and stands a good chance of becoming prime minister. At 38, he would be the youngest person to hold the office since World War II and the first openly gay candidate ever to do so.  “Many in the Brussels bubble will welcome the rise of a mainstream, pro-governing and reform-oriented party,” said one EU diplomat, granted anonymity because the subject is politically sensitive. “The Dutch have a lot to contribute to the EU.” But even as they exhale with relief at the end of the Wilders interlude, the inhabitants of Europe’s dominant liberal center-ground — those Brussels officials, diplomats and ministers who run the EU show — would be well advised not to celebrate too hard. If previous years are any guide, the final shape of the next government and its policy plans will not become clear for months. Who knows what will have happened in Ukraine, the Middle East, or in Donald Trump’s trade war with China in that time? “It is essential for European cooperation that a new government is stable and able to make bold decisions, given the current geopolitical challenges that Europe is facing,” the same diplomat said. Even when the new coalition finally begins its work, this election should worry Europe’s liberal centrists almost as much as it delights them. JETTEN INTO EUROPE  Jetten’s Democracy 66 party has never done so well at a Dutch election: Assuming he gets the job he wants, he’ll be the party’s first prime minister. This week he told POLITICO he wanted to move the Netherlands closer to the EU.  Last night, officials in Brussels privately welcomed the prospect of the Dutch and their highly regarded diplomats returning to their historic place at the center of EU affairs, after two years in which they lost some influence. It was always going to be tough for the outgoing PM Dick Schoof, a 68-year-old technocrat, to follow the long-serving Mark Rutte, an EU star who now runs NATO. Domestic divisions made his job even harder.  But pro-European spirits also rose because the disruptive Wilders had wanted to keep the EU at arm’s length. Jetten’s position could hardly be more different. In fact, he sounds like an EU federalist’s dream.  “We want to stop saying ‘no’ by default, and start saying ‘yes’ to doing more together,” Jetten told POLITICO this week. “I cannot stress enough how dire Europe’s situation will be if we do not integrate further.”  STAYING DUTCH In Brussels, officials expect the next Dutch administration to maintain the same broad outlook on core policies: restraint on the EU’s long-term budget; cracking down on migration; boosting trade and competitiveness; and supporting Ukraine, alongside stronger common defense. One area where things could get complicated is climate policy. Jetten is committed to climate action and may end up in a power-sharing deal with GreenLeft-Labor, which was led at this election by former EU Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans.  How any government that Jetten leads balances climate action with improving economic growth will be key to policy discussions in Brussels. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been trimming climate measures amid center-right complaints that they are expensive for consumers and businesses. But she wants to secure backing for new targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.  Elsewhere, housing and migration — two areas often linked by far-right politicians — were central issues in the Dutch campaign. Both will continue to feature on the EU’s agenda, too.  For many watching the results unfold in Brussels, the biggest concerns are practical: Will the next Dutch government be more stable than the last one? And how long will it take to for the coalition to form? Seven months passed between the last election in November 2023 and Schoof taking office as prime minister in July 2024. “This is a historic election result because we’ve shown not only to the Netherlands but also to the world that it’s possible to beat populist and extreme-right movements,” Jetten told his supporters. “I’m very eager to cooperate with other parties to start an ambitious coalition as soon as possible.”  WILDERS Beneath the rare good news of a pro-European triumph and a far-right failure lurk more worrying trends for EU centrists.  First of all, there’s the sheer volatility of the result. Most voters apparently made up their minds at the last moment.  Wilders went from winning the popular vote and taking 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch lower house in 2023 to a projected 26 seats this time. Jetten’s D66 party, meanwhile, went from just nine seats two years ago to a projected 26, according to a preliminary forecast by the Dutch news agency ANP. The center-right Christian Democratic Appeal took just five seats in 2023 but now stands to win 18, according to the forecast. With swings this wild, anything could happen next time. Most major parties say they won’t work with Wilders in coalition now, making Jetten the more likely new PM if the projections hold. But Wilders says he is a long way from finished. “You won’t be rid of me until I’m 80,” the 62 year-old told supporters. In fact, Wilders might find a period in opposition — free from the constraints and compromises required in government — the perfect place to resume his inflammatory campaigns against Islam, immigration and the EU.  Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage had all been written off before storming back into their respective political front lines. “We had hoped for a different outcome, but we stood our ground,” Wilders wrote on X. “We are more determined than ever.”  TIMM’S UP  The other cloud on the pro-European horizon is the fate of Timmermans.  His center-left ticket was expected to do well and had been polling second behind Wilders’ Freedom Party in the months before the vote. But per the preliminary forecast, GreenLeft-Labor will fall from 25 seats to 20. Timmermans — who also stood in 2023 — resigned as leader.  It wasn’t just a defeat for the party, but also in some ways for Brussels. Timmermans had served as the European Commission’s executive vice president during von der Leyen’s first term, and was seen by some, especially his opponents, as a creation of the EU bubble.  Others point to the fact the center-left is struggling across Europe.  “It’s clear that I, for whatever reason, couldn’t convince people to vote for us,” Timmermans said. “It’s time that I take a step back and transfer the lead of our movement to the next generation.” Jetten’s pro-Europeanism could also come back to haunt him by the time of the next election. If he fails to deliver miracles to back up his optimistic pitch to voters, his Euroskeptic opponents have a ready-made argument for what went wrong. Recent history in the Netherlands, and elsewhere, suggests they won’t be afraid to use it.  Eva Hartog, Hanne Cokelaere, Pieter Haeck and Max Griera contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — Call it a digital love triangle. When EU leaders back a “sovereign digital transition” at a summit in Brussels this Thursday, their words will mask a rift between France and Germany over how to deal with America’s overwhelming dominance in technology. The bloc’s founding members have long taken differing approaches to how far the continent should seek to go in detoxing from U.S. giants. In Paris, sovereignty is about backing local champions and breaking reliance on U.S. Big Tech. In Berlin the focus is on staying open and protecting Europe without severing ties with a major German trading partner. The EU leaders’ statement is a typical fudge — it cites the need for Europe to “reinforce its sovereignty” while maintaining “close collaboration with trusted partner countries,” according to a near-final draft obtained by POLITICO ahead of the gathering.    That plays into the hands of incumbent U.S. interests, even as the bloc’s reliance on American tech was again brought into sharp focus Monday when an outage at Amazon cloud servers in Northern Virginia disrupted the morning routines of millions of Europeans.   As France and Germany prepare to host a high-profile summit on digital sovereignty in Berlin next month, the two countries are still seeking common ground — attendees say preparations for the summit have been disorganized and that there is little alignment so far on concrete outcomes. When asked about his expectations for the Nov. 18 gathering, German Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger told POLITICO he wanted “to have an open debate around what is digital sovereignty” and “hopefully … have some great announcements.”  In her first public appearance following her appointment this month, France’s new Digital Minister Anne Le Hénanff, by comparison, promised to keep pushing for solutions that are immune to U.S. interference in cloud computing — a key area of American dominance.   CONTRASTING PLAYBOOKS   “There are indeed different strategic perspectives,” said Martin Merz, the president of SAP Sovereign Cloud. He contrasted France’s “more state-driven approach focusing on national independence and self-sufficiency in key technologies” with Germany’s emphasis on “European cooperation and market-oriented solutions.”  A recent FGS Global survey laid bare the split in public opinion as well. Most French respondents said France “should compete globally on its own to become a tech leader,” while most Germans preferred to “prioritize deeper regional alliances” to “compete together.” The fact that technological sovereignty has even made it onto the agenda of EU leaders follows a recent softening in Berlin, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz becoming increasingly outspoken about the limits of the American partnership while warning against “false nostalgia.” The coalition agreement in Berlin also endorsed the need to build “an interoperable and European-connectable sovereign German stack,” referring to a domestically controlled digital infrastructure ecosystem.  The fact that technological sovereignty has even made it onto the agenda of EU leaders follows a recent softening in Berlin, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz becoming increasingly outspoken about the limits of the American partnership while warning against “false nostalgia.” | Ralf Hirschberger/AFP via Getty Images Yet Germany — which has a huge trade deficit with the U.S — is fundamentally cautious about alienating Washington.   “France has been willing to accept some damage to the transatlantic relationship in order to support French business interests,” said Zach Meyers, director of research at the CERRE think tank in Brussels.   For Germany, by contrast, the two are “very closely tied together, largely because of the importance of the U.S. as an export market,” he said.   Berlin has dragged its feet on phasing out Huawei from mobile networks over fears of Chinese retaliation, against its car industry in particular.   The European Commission itself is walking a similar tightrope — dealing with U.S. threats against EU flagship laws that allegedly target American firms, while fielding growing calls to unapologetically back homegrown tech. STUCK ON DEFINITION  “Sovereignty is not a clearly defined term as it relates to technology,” said Dave Michels, a cloud computing law researcher at Queen Mary University of London.   He categorized it into two broad interpretations: technical sovereignty, or keeping data safe from foreign snooping and control, and political sovereignty, which focuses on strategic autonomy and economic security, i.e safeguarding domestic industries and supply chains.  “Those things can align, and I do think they are converging around this idea that we need to support European alternatives, but they don’t necessarily overlap completely. That’s where you can see some tensions,” Michels said.  Leaders will say in their joint statement that “it is crucial to advance Europe’s digital transformation, reinforce its sovereignty and strengthen its own open digital ecosystem.” “We don’t really have a shared vocabulary to define what digital sovereignty is. But we do have a shared understanding of what it means not to have digital sovereignty,” said Yann Lechelle, CEO of French AI company Probabl. Berlin isn’t the only capital trying to convince Europe to ensure its digital sovereignty remains open to U.S. interests.   Austria, too, wants to take “a leading role” in nailing down that tone, State Secretary Alexandre Pröll previously told POLITICO. The country has been on a mission to agree a “common charter” emphasizing that sovereignty should “not be misinterpreted as protectionist independence,” according to a draft reported by POLITICO. That “will create a clear political roadmap for a digital Europe that acts independently while remaining open to trustworthy partners,” Pröll said.   Next month’s Berlin gathering will be crucial in setting a direction. French President Emmanuel Macron and Merz are both expected to attend. “The summit is intended to send a strong signal that Europe is aware of the challenges and is actively advancing digital sovereignty,” a spokesperson for the German digital ministry said in a statement, adding that “this is not about autarky but about strengthening its own capabilities and potential.” “One summit will not be enough,” said Johannes Schätzl, a Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag. “But if there will be an agreement saying that we want to take the path toward greater digital sovereignty together, that alone would already be a very important signal.” Mathieu Pollet reported from Brussels, Emile Marzolf reported from Paris and Laura Hülsemann and Frida Preuß reported from Berlin.