> Wasn't there some talk about the pressing need for European digital sovereignty recently?

At FOSDEM, we discuss this at great length. There has been some movement, and I am optimistic that it is improving year on year.

Not really. EU is actually trying to decouple. But in many cases there are not any homegrown alternatives to support. There is not a single company in EU that could replace, even a considerable part, of software stack provided by Google and Apple.

And, unless the regulatory environment changes., there probably never will be.

The US can call Austria in 5 minutes and with no burden of proof get the airspace permit for a head of sovereign state revoked and the plane swatted instantly upon landing, because someone might have been on board (he wasn’t) whose only real crime was embarrassing the USA by exposing their fundamentally unconstitutional lawbreaking.

Same goes with the prosecutors in Sweden; a phone call and the US got, not charges (as that would actually be official misconduct in Sweden), but enough of an official statement from a prosecutor to get the words “Assange” and “rape” in headlines together around the world by that evening.

European countries are, by and large, lapdogs of the USA. It’s sad. And then the US president turns around and stabs them in the back by threatening invasion and annexation, or complete disregard for the fundamental obligations of NATO members.

I really don’t know what the fuck the Europeans are thinking by playing the US’s stupid games. As we see time and time again, it won’t be repaid in kind.

Europe will never have digital sovereignty from the US.

It will take 100 years and an extremely expensive, government-mandated reimplementation of every critical US tech service and company.

No EU country is putting up budget for this, and no private enterprise is going to do it because building a worse version of AWS just so that it is "European" makes no financial sense and would most likely just fail anyway.