Why we need Digital Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty has quietly shifted from a political buzzword to a strategic business reality. However, many European companies still perceive it as abstract or ideological, or as something that can be safely delegated to governments and regulators.

This perception is risky.

Digital sovereignty is not about nationalism, protectionism, or withdrawing from global markets. It is about control and resilience. It is about having the ability to make deliberate choices today that will not compromise our ability to operate in the future. In a software-defined economy, that makes digital sovereignty a concern for every business, regardless of its size or sector.

Dependency Is a Strategic Liability

At its core, digital sovereignty means having the ability to independently decide how our digital systems are built, operated, and evolved. This includes where our data is stored, which legal regimes apply, who controls the platforms we depend on, and how easily we can adapt when conditions change.

Despite its strong engineering talent and a mature regulatory framework, Europe is structurally dependent on non-European providers for large parts of its digital infrastructure. While this dependency is not malicious, it is consequential, and it is steadily intensifying as Europe continues to outsource core digital capabilities relating to infrastructure, platforms, and services.

Dependencies create strategic lock-in: switching costs rise, exit options quietly erode, and flexibility is lost long before it is noticed. They also undermine resilience, as geopolitical or regulatory shifts can disrupt access to essential services with little warning. What may seem convenient in the short term can become constraining over time.

Global crises, sanctions, trade disputes, or sudden regulatory changes can affect access to critical services at any time. When essential operations depend on systems outside our control, we inherit vulnerabilities that we did not design and cannot easily mitigate.

Control Is a Software Problem

One aspect that is often overlooked is the close link between digital sovereignty and software quality. Digital sovereignty cannot be achieved through contracts or data centre locations alone. Its success or failure lies in software. Opaque architectures, undocumented dependencies and tightly coupled systems undermine sovereignty, regardless of where vendors are headquartered.

When we do not understand our own systems, we cannot control them.

High-quality software preserves optionality. Clear boundaries, replaceable components, open interfaces and predictable failure modes ensure that choices remain available. Without these qualities, sovereignty remains a legal fiction with little operational value.

Sovereignty Is a Business Advantage

Digital sovereignty is not a political agenda, but a business advantage. It is a business discipline. It aligns directly with risk management, compliance, business continuity, cost control and customer trust. Outsourcing technology without preserving control means relinquishing strategic leverage.

The way forward is not isolation. It is about being intentional. We need to identify critical dependencies. We must understand exit paths, even if we never plan to use them. We should favour open standards and portable architectures. Data must be treated as a strategic asset, not just a compliance burden.

When executed effectively, digital sovereignty becomes a signal of maturity. Customers, partners and regulators increasingly reward organisations that demonstrate control, transparency and responsibility.

While Europe does not need to withdraw from the global digital economy, businesses do need to participate on their own terms. In a world where software has become infrastructure and infrastructure has become power, digital sovereignty is about one thing above all else:

Remaining in control of our future.