Join the new ACES theme group “Tech, Power, and Policy: Europe’s Strategic Balancing Act” for a roundtable discussion on the EuroStack Initiative.

The idea of the Eurostack gained traction after a conference at the European Parliament last year, followed by a pitch-paper from a group of contributors including Cristina Caffarra. The conversation now continues with a report by Francesca Bria, Fausto Gernone, and Paul Timmers. The latest report offers an analysis of Europe’s current technological dependencies and provides a vision for building an alternative European digital technology stack. The authors advocate for an industrial policy to realise the EuroStack components in order to achieve increase digital sovereignty. This proposal comes at a time when the US administration and digital tech oligarchs openly push back on Europe’s regulatory autonomy and European values.

Based on these proposals, there will be a discussion about Digital Sovereignty, the merits of the proposals, and the risks and challenges that lie ahead. Some of the challenge lies in managing interdependence, striking a delicate balance between maintaining global connectivity and open digital markets while safeguarding Europe’s strategic interests and values. The group will ask whether it is possible in geopolitically unstable times to produce a coherent technology policy map, and how this could integrate industrial, digital, and competition strategies. 

UvA employees may register here.

Opening talk

• Zuzanna Warso (Open Future; Fellow, Critical infrastructure lab, UvA) – ‘Digital Public Infrastructure and the digital sovereignty we need’ 

Panellists

• Jamal Shahin (European Studies, UvA) 
• Kristina Irion (Institute for Information Law, UvA) 
• Nora von Ingersleben-Seip (RegulAIte, UvA) 

Moderator

• Niels ten Oever (Critical infrastructure lab, UvA)