‘Buy European’: Airbus and others call for sovereign fund and higher Europe tech autonomy

‘Buy European’: Airbus and others call for sovereign fund and higher Europe tech autonomy


European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attends a press conference after a European Union leaders’ special summit to discuss Ukraine and European defense, in Brussels, Belgium March 6, 2025.

Stephanie Lecocq | Reuters

Airbus and over 90 other European companies and lobby groups have called on the European Commission to create a sovereign infrastructure fund to boost public investment and bolster the region’s autonomy in the tech sector.

In a March 14 letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen, the signatories — which include Dassault Systemes, French cloud services supplier OVHcloud and the European Startup Network — stressed the need for Europe’s technological self-reliance as it confronts a “stark reality” following “developments in U.S./EU relations.”

“Building strategic autonomy in key sectors is now a recognised urgent imperative across Europe,” the letter said. It stressed that Europe is now in a “laggard position” in the digital space — having been significantly outpaced by the U.S. and China — and will have a near-complete reliance on non-European technologies in less than three years at the current rate.

“Europe needs to recover the initiative, and become more technologically independent across all layers of its critical digital infrastructure: from logical Infrastructure — applications, platforms, media, AI frameworks and models — to physical Infrastructure — chips, computing, storage and connectivity,” the letter says, warning that “Europe’s current multiple dependencies create security and reliability risks, compromise our sovereignty and hurt our growth.”

Chief among the letter’s requests for a “pragmatic industrial policy strategy” is the need for Europe to inject a formal requirement for the public sector to “Buy European” as well as incentivize the private sector to steer toward similar purchases — with an aim “not to exclude non-European players, but to create space where European suppliers can legitimately compete (and justify investment).”

The letter also calls for the creation of a sovereign infrastructure fund for public investments in tech, particularly in “capital-intensive” projects such as quantum and chips, requesting “significant” funds either allocated or underwritten by the European Investment Bank and by national public funding bodies.

Europe is striving to gain momentum in the tech sector, where executives and venture capitalists have been calling for additional investment and laxer regulation to rejuvenate growth — particularly in the booming AI space.

Amid aggressive U.S. protectionist policies and tariff impositions, the European Union has increasingly sought to safeguard growth and bolster its autonomy, earlier this month proposing fiscal measures that could mobilize nearly 800 billion euros ($872 billion) toward the region’s higher defense spend.

This developing story is being updated.



Source

Trump will hold a rally at U.S. Steel as investors seek clarity on Nippon deal. Here’s what we know
World

Trump will hold a rally at U.S. Steel as investors seek clarity on Nippon deal. Here’s what we know

President Donald Trump will hold a rally Friday at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh, a week after signaling that he had cleared a controversial merger with Japan’s Nippon Steel. Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks at 5 p.m. ET at U.S. Steel’s Irvin Works in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, according to the White House. Investors […]

Read More
Tesla shares set to wrap strong May as Elon Musk ends time with Trump’s DOGE
World

Tesla shares set to wrap strong May as Elon Musk ends time with Trump’s DOGE

Elon Musk is interviewed on CNBC from the Tesla headquarters in Texas. CNBC Shares of the Elon Musk-led automaker Tesla have rallied in May despite recent poor car sales numbers for the company in China and Europe, as the billionaire CEO promised to focus more on his businesses than politics. Tesla shares are on track […]

Read More
China calls out Trump for ‘abuse’ of semiconductor export controls
World

China calls out Trump for ‘abuse’ of semiconductor export controls

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. Dan Kitwoodnicholas Kamm | Afp | Getty Images China is calling out the U.S. for “discriminatory restrictions” in its use of export controls in the chip industry, after the Trump administration accused the world’s second-largest economy of violating a preliminary trade deal between the two countries. […]

Read More