“Buy European” sounds strategic. It isn’t.
Procurement nationalism is the feel-good answer to Europe’s digital dependence. Write a bigger cheque to a European-headquartered supplier, and sovereignty will follow. Except it doesn’t. A European vendor running on non-European cloud, chips and legal exposure is not sovereignty. It is sovereignty cosplay.
In a new EDI perspective, Roman Beck makes the case that Europe’s digital sovereignty gap is not a supplier problem but an institutional one: legal authority without operational control. The answer is not narrower vendor lists. It is federal capacity over strategic infrastructure, paired with decentralised technical architectures that distribute control rather than concentrate it.
Four questions public procurement should start asking, regardless of where the supplier is headquartered:
- Who holds the keys?
- Can we see inside?
- Can we compel action?
- Can we leave?
Sovereignty does not follow the flag on a tender document. It follows control over the rails.
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