On November 18, Berlin hosted the first Summit on European Digital Sovereignty. France and Germany used the occasion to unveil a set of new initiatives aimed at strengthening data protection, developing cloud markets, and advancing so-called frontier AI, alongside €12bn ($13.9bn) in promised private investment. But despite its ambitious agenda, the summit still mischaracterised sovereignty as a question of capacity – how much infrastructure Europe can build – rather than control.While European policymakers continue to insist that digital sovereignty is about self-sufficiency, infrastructure alone does not bring real power. For starters, it is costly to build and often fails to change who controls digital systems. To compete globally, the European Union must focus on the bottlenecks that characterise today’s digital economy – areas where data, value, and decision-making power concentrate – and use these choke points to gain leverage over Big Tech giants. The task ahead is not to construct parallel systems, but to secure Europe’s position within those that already shape global markets.The political case for digital sovereignty is clear and compelling: the EU remains competitive in industrial production but lags in digital infrastructure and platform technologies. To reduce dependence on foreign providers, it must bolster its technological capabilities.True sovereignty, however, is not about erecting barriers. It is about controlling the interfaces and standards that can give Europe leverage within global value chains. Whoever governs these bottlenecks wields outsize influence, setting the terms of access for everyone else. In this sense, sovereignty rests on indispensability rather than self-sufficiency.SAP is a prime example. As one of the few major European players in the enterprise-software sector, its power lies not only in its scale but in its ability to establish the rules and standards of global commerce. By defining how manufacturers, suppliers, and regulators connect and exchange data, SAP occupies a pivotal position within industrial processes worldwide. Sustaining such influence requires control over data architectures, stewardship of interoperability frameworks, and alignment with emerging data-exchange platforms and industrial cloud systems.ASML, by contrast, shows what happens when European indispensability does not translate into strategic leverage. The company’s cutting-edge lithography machines effectively set technical standards for one of the world’s most critical sectors, advanced semiconductors. But ASML has little interest in turning its dominance into geopolitical influence for fear that politicisation could undermine its commercial standing. EU policymakers, for their part, have failed to use ASML’s unique position to advance the bloc’s interests.To achieve digital sovereignty, the EU must support firms that develop technologies competitors cannot easily substitute. While international co-operation is essential, it must reinforce – not weaken – Europe’s grip on key layers of the digital stack. When firms are confined to the low-value layers of the stack, they become increasingly dependent on the foreign companies that control data flows, software standards, and update cycles.German automakers’ dependence on companies like Nvidia, AWS, and Mobileye for the software and computing systems that underpin next-generation vehicles is a striking example of the risks posed by Europe’s current trajectory. With vital components – from simulation tools to perception algorithms and remote-update infrastructure – remaining outside the EU’s control, Europe’s most important manufacturers could end up locked into systems designed elsewhere.European firms cannot shift these dynamics alone, and the EU cannot regulate its way to digital power. Previous top-down solutions, from the Gaia-X initiative to the Chips Act, have faltered because leverage depends on firm positioning, not regulatory decree. Turning technological strength into a strategic edge requires public-policy support for firms through joint ventures, co-development consortia, and active engagement with sovereign cloud platforms and AI systems.Infrastructure investment is necessary, but it is not enough. Digital sovereignty must be built from the bottom up, by supporting firms as they strengthen their foothold in the parts of value chains that drive learning, lock-in, and ecosystem co-ordination.To this end, European governments must back firms willing to take risks by investing in proprietary AI tools, co-developing industry-specific platforms, or regaining control of data management and software-update processes. Crucially, public support should not replace private initiative but rather complement it through procurement, co-investment, and open-standard programmes. Equally important, partnerships with established global providers should be structured so that European firms retain data rights, influence standards, and enhance long-term capabilities.For EU policymakers, the challenge lies in directing public investment toward the layers of the digital stack where control can still be exercised. This is most realistic in sectors where Europe retains industrial strength, such as sensor-fusion software, robot operating systems, and industrial communication protocols like Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture. These layers channel data flows and influence switching costs, enabling European firms to create dependencies down the value chain.To be sure, complete EU control is unlikely in highly competitive fields like AI and autonomous driving. But the bloc can still improve its position by establishing the operating practices and procedural norms that determine how these systems connect and communicate.Above all, the EU must project power not by replicating every layer of America’s digital stack, but by ensuring European firms play a central role in designing the core infrastructures of the digital age. Only then will sovereignty become a source of resilience rather than a pretext for isolation. – Project Syndicate Anke Hassel is Professor of Public Policy at the Hertie School, Berlin. Frieder Mitsch is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Waseda University, Tokyo.

This week, Airbus got a brutal reminder that even the world’s most-delivered jet — the A320 — isn’t immune to shocks as disparate as solar flares and flawed metal. Days after recalling 6,000 A320-series planes over a software glitch linked to cosmic radiation, the European giant was forced to slash delivery targets when defects surfaced in some of their fuselage panels.The twin setbacks — one rooted in astrophysics, the other in basic metallurgy — underscore how fragile success can be for a planemaker that dominates the busiest corner of aviation and is on track to outpace Boeing for a seventh straight year.“As we put one thing behind us, we have another,” CEO Guillaume Faury told Reuters as he weighed how many aircraft could be affected by problems with the thickness of panels.Last Friday, Airbus issued surprise instructions to airlines to revert to a previous version of software in a computer that directs the nose angle on some jets, several weeks after a JetBlue A320 tilted downwards, injuring about a dozen on board. It blamed the issue on a vulnerability to solar flares that could, in theory, have caused the plane to lurch downwards — a brush with the sun reminiscent of Greek mythology as airlines scrambled to deal with a flaw nicknamed the “Icarus bug”.The rollback happened faster than expected but within days Airbus was grappling with a more humdrum issue threatening to cut short the year-end rush in plane deliveries: the discovery of flawed fuselage panels.The glitch, first reported by Reuters last Monday, caused a sharp sell-off in the company’s shares as investors pondered how it would hit already shaky delivery targets for the year. Within 48 hours Airbus had cut its target by 4% and on Friday it confirmed deliveries had already slowed in November. The two unrelated setbacks came weeks after the A320 series, including the best-selling A321, surpassed the recently troubled Boeing 737 MAX as the most-delivered passenger jet in history.“Airbus is at present an A321 machine,” said Agency Partners analyst Sash Tusa. “That extreme concentration on a single model has both strengths and vulnerabilities.”The broader A320 medium-haul family accounts for most Airbus sales and the ‘vast majority’ of profit, he said, adding there were inconsistencies between Airbus lowering delivery targets and maintaining financial forecasts.Airbus shares were down around 3% over the week having dropped as much as 11% last Monday. As the week ends, Airbus is under pressure from official investigators to supply more data on the software grounding as well as pushback from some airlines reluctant to take delivery without new guarantees on affected fuselage parts, sources said. It also faces lingering questions about supply chains.Airbus has been at odds with some of its suppliers over plans to raise production to meet strong demand for air travel. Unions and suppliers say quality snags such as the panel problem at a Spanish supplier highlights how some are struggling. Airbus said that the industrial flaw was not a safety issue. It has said previously that supply chains are improving overall after being thrown into disarray by the Covid pandemic.In particular, the fuselage snag highlights concerns over one of the weakest parts of the industry: the aerostructures firms which make parts that are never replaced, cutting them off from spare parts sales that have been highly profitable for others. Insiders said Airbus’s week-long crisis began last Thursday in the charged atmosphere immediately following an appeals trial of Airbus and Air France for corporate manslaughter over the crash of an A330 in 2009 — charges both strongly deny. Engineers probing the JetBlue incident had just concluded that a software update designed to make it harder for A320s to stall even when their normal defences are accidentally disabled — echoing the loss of control on AF447 — may have removed a backup layer of protection used to correct solar interference.But with the cosmic particles leaving no trace, Airbus’s findings on JetBlue were hypothetical and there was no proof, sources said, prompting the precautionary recall decision.“We are used to this in space, it’s not uncommon,” Faury said. “We discovered that we had a vulnerability on the software on that computer, so we had to deal with it.”Experts said the incident was a reminder of aviation’s exposure to Earth’s bombardment by rays from deep space or the sun, an issue raised by a landmark Boeing/IBM study in 1995 but increasingly relevant as modern jets use more electronic chips.“It’s an alarm... the international community needs to work in unison to make sure that we further understand this phenomenon,” cosmic radiation expert George Danos, president of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation, said.