1/ Today, the European Commission presented the so-called #TechSovereigntyPackage after months of delay.
👎 Despite a very welcome EU #OpenSourceStrategy, the overall package is a lost opportunity built on a corporate lobbying narrative: the legal rules created to protect our rights are considered to be a barrier to the EU’s “competitiveness” and, as such, “sovereignty.”
2/ European tech shouldn’t be about entering a race to the bottom with the 🇺🇲 & 🇨🇳 .
The EU's strength should be achieved through reliable data protection rules, platform, and AI governance, as well as environmental protection, economic justice and democratic governance of technology.
🚫 Any policy for “sovereignty” should focus on providing people in Europe with increased digital self-determination, not on building European versions of #BigTech
More ➡️ https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/129100
3/ 💰 The Tech Sovereignty Package is a massive spending spree for more AI, more chips, and more resource-sucking data centres in Europe.
🤑 The Commission suggests that by spending billions in public money to prop up the local data centre industry, it can magically create Europe’s own #ChatGPT and #claude
❌ The proposal gives little, if any, appreciation to the impact of AI data centres on water consumption, electricity use, and on communities.
➡️ https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/proposal-cloud-and-ai-development-act-cada
4/ There is a positive outlier: the EU #opensourcestrategy
It reflects the crucial role that free and open source software (FOSS) play for Europe’s ability to break free from Big Tech.
Its explicit recognition of independent, volunteer-, and SME-driven #FOSS communities ( 👋 @linux & @Mastodon) are a welcome signal that EU institutions are keen on leaving proprietary dependencies behind them.
Read our recommendations ⤵️
https://edri.org/our-work/europes-digital-sovereignty-starts-with-open-source/
5/ 📣 We call on the legislators in the European Parliament and the Council to question the Commission’s misguided belief in data centre growth and hyper-scaling unicorns, and instead build on the promises made in the Open Source Strategy and make sure they actually happen.
It is time to steer this continent towards a future where technology works for the people, democracy, and the planet.
EDRi
Ruud Baars
狐ヴィクシー