Europe’s technology debate has moved from rule-making to capacity-building. The Commission’s 2026 Technological Sovereignty Package is designed to increase European control over chips, cloud, AI infrastructure, open-source software and energy systems. That is a major shift in industrial policy — but it leaves one commercially decisive question unresolved: who owns the route to the customer?
The scale of the infrastructure problem is already stark. EU institutions estimate that Europe depends on non-EU suppliers for more than 80% of key digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property. Europe’s semiconductor share is around 9% of the global market. Three non-EU hyperscalers control more than 70% of the European cloud market.
Brussels is responding with capital. The EU’s July call for up to seven AI Gigafactories offers up to €10 billion in public funding and is intended to unlock at least €20 billion in private investment. That money is aimed at compute, processors, cloud capacity and the physical foundations of AI.
But the commercial layer above that infrastructure remains concentrated elsewhere. The Commission’s own Digital Markets Act review identifies TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn as gatekeeper social networks, WhatsApp and Messenger as gatekeeper messaging services and YouTube as the gatekeeper video-sharing service. Their parent companies are headquartered outside the EU.
That distinction matters because distribution is not a cosmetic layer. A cloud company can win a customer through procurement. A chipmaker can enter a supply chain through performance, price and industrial partnerships. A consumer platform must overcome network effects: people use the service because other people are already there.
The scale is visible in European transparency data. Instagram reported roughly 288.7 million average monthly active recipients in the EU in the second half of 2025, Facebook about 263 million and TikTok around 178 million. The figures overlap and should not be added, but each independently describes an audience larger than many national markets.
For a deeper account of the structural gap, The Bizzi Route’s base analysis argues that Europe may succeed in owning more of the compute beneath the internet while still renting the relationship with the person holding the phone.
The policy response is beginning to acknowledge that reality. Under the DMA, alternative messaging providers can interoperate with WhatsApp and Messenger, reducing one of the strongest barriers to entry. The Commission says new providers, including a European SME, have already entered the market using those openings.
For business, this is potentially more significant than it looks. Interoperability converts a closed network from an absolute barrier into a contested interface. It gives new entrants a chance to compete on trust, product design, privacy, enterprise integration or sector-specific services without first persuading entire communities to migrate together.
The next stage of European technology policy therefore cannot be measured only in fabs, data centres and gigawatts. It will also be measured in distribution channels, user acquisition and the ability of European products to scale beyond institutional procurement.
Europe’s industrial strategy is finally addressing supply. Its tougher task is building demand around European products strongly enough that they become habits, not simply compliant alternatives.