Over the past year, digital sovereignty has taken centre stage in European policy debates. Democratic-by-design governance of tech companies, however, has received far less attention. It deserves much more.
The current conversation about sovereignty remains, for the most part, narrowly focused on economics. Most recently, Germany and France have included digital sovereignty in their joint economic agenda. When it comes to emerging technologies, however, the economic dimension is only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
We can all agree that the technology sector has many problems. Since one of them is a clear democratic deficit, that’s our problem too. We citizens elect our representatives, yet ultimately, a few Big Tech corporations decide our collective destiny. Big Tech companies can choose to switch their services on and off for the general public and government institutions. They can determine whether, and how, they comply with laws enacted by democratically elected officials. They can even decide what information citizens do (or do not) have access to.
In the past few years, evidence showing that Big Tech companies pose a threat to democracy has only kept growing. The issues lie not only in specific practices such as weak data protection standards, amplification of disinformation, and election interference, but most importantly in their very structure. These corporations concentrate power not only in the market but also in how they govern themselves.
It is becoming ever clearer that this issue requires both attention and action. Ahead of the Franco-German Summit on European Digital Sovereignty, taking place this week in Berlin, the pressing question is what the European Union can (and should) do about it in the context of its digital sovereignty agenda.
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