[Interview] Dependence on US or Chinese tech risks psychological erosion of EU values, ex-commission official warns

EUobserver sat down for an interview with Paul Timmers, who served as director for digital and cybersecurity in the European Commission, and is now a geopolitics and technology professor at KU Leuven in Belgium and the European University in Cyprus

Timmers recently published a briefing on the need to defend Europe’s digital infrastructures in an era of competing sovereignty in tech.

His work bridges geopolitics and information technology, as the EU urgently seeks to become autonomous in the digital sphere. 

He spoke candidly on our future, what compromises we can make, and how Europe stands to lose if we not only source our technology from abroad, but sell also our values, and autonomy, in exchange. 

A few terms are used interchangeably to talk about European tech control – what are the correct definitions of “sovereignty,” “autonomy,” and “resilience” in this area?

There is perhaps a bit of a confusion of terms because people are using them interchangeably. But if you look at what political literature says, sovereignty is essentially about being able to decide and act on your own future, whether in the economy or defence of society or democracy – strategic autonomy is the means to safeguard sovereignty. It consists of three elements that basically come from military terminology. That’s the three Cs: competences, capacities – needing to be able to produce – and to have control. 

There’s often this kind of confusion because when people talk about digital sovereignty, they actually mean digital strategic autonomy, because they talk about having the competences, having the capacities, and having the control. I prefer, I must say, the term ‘digital autonomy’ over ‘digital sovereignty’, so if you use the term strategic autonomy, it’s also easier to talk about health autonomy, financial autonomy, etc.

Between ‘dependence’ and ‘autarky’ there’s a big grey area of interdependence, where should Europe be aiming for to maximise?

There’s also that further kind of confusion that strategic autonomy would mean autarky, which is not the case. Because what you need to look at is: what is your goal? The goal is to safeguard your sovereignty. You can perfectly well do that together with partners who are not threatening your sovereignty, defence being a good example of working together to realise your digital autonomy. That means: it’s not a matter of doing everything on your own.