Ethical salience
Trend category
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Increasing efforts in reaching technological sovereignty risk putting environmental goals under strain in the EU. It will be up to political decisionmakers to decide whether they accept certain setbacks in terms of sustainability targets in order to make progress on technological sovereignty.
Amidst geopolitical tensions, the EU is striving for technological sovereignty and economic independence, as reflected in recent discussions on strategic autonomy and decoupling. Technological sovereignty of political entities can be understood as comprising of two axes, namely the possession of technological capacities as well as independence from foreign entities in the exercise of these capacities. Key initiatives include "Digital sovereignty for Europe", the Tech Sovereignty Package – published June 2026, building on the Competitive Compass, both the Chips and the AI Act, as well as the EuroStack initiative. Relevant events include the Sovereign Tech Europe conference in April 2026 and the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty between Germany and France in November 2025. Among many stakeholders, like STOA observes bolstered European technology sectors are relevant for competitiveness. Such efforts aim to address important ethical and societal concerns, including the governance of powerful digital technologies, data protection, and the promotion of a democratic and prosperous Union through increased European production capacity.
However, some of these endeavours may generate ethical trade-offs between technological goals on the one hand, and environmental sustainability goals on the other. This is increasingly visible in policy discourse through shifts in political priorities.
It is EU policymakers responsibility to anticipate trade-offs and consider the interdependencies and tensions between technological sovereignty and sustainability targets.
The EU depends on China in AI and semiconductor technology, as well as on the US in data governance. The following initiatives aim to tackle ethical issues resulting from this and increase the focus on tech-sovereignty in the EU:
Beyond the EU's strategic interest to continue with climate action, biodiversity, climate stability, and clean, healthy environments are also ethically relevant. They enable securing fundamental human rights for both current and future generations and are thus key in EU policy objectives. However, the EU's short-term technological priorities make its climate commitments uncertain.
The intensified prioritisation of technological capacities could constitute significant value trade-offs for the EU regarding environmental sustainability:
With policy discourses increasingly shifting to matters of tech sovereignty, economic independence and domestic production, there is evidence that environmental policy in the EU is beginning to be framed in more economic terms, or that the environment is put in service of strategic autonomy and economic gains. This trend raises ethical concerns, particularly if resources earmarked for sustainability are redirected toward sectors associated with technological sovereignty. Such reallocation is already evident in the restructuring of the EU Cohesion Funds.
Subsidies and other support for technology developers that are not conditional on improving sustainability could delay environmental targets. The "twin transition", i.e. the "convergence of the green and digital transitions", has been recognised as a potential setback to sustainability goals. Finally, reports that US technology lobbyists influenced EU regulation to conceal data centres’ energy consumption, underscore the sensitivity of policymaking at the intersection of technological development and sustainability. Expanding digital infrastructure could undermine environmental targets as for instance data centre energy demand is projected to rise sharply over the next decade, with the European Environmental Agency (EEA) estimating a doubling of electricity consumption by 2030 and an elevenfold increase in water use relative to 2024 levels.30 To address this issue, in a recent Strategic Roadmap the EC announced to adopt, among others, a Data Centre Energy Efficiency Package which should help to align sustainability goals with increased usage of cloud and AI systems. If initiatives for technological sovereignty are not assessed for their compatibility with sustainability goals, decision-makers run the risk of jeopardising these goals in the long term.
The EU may consider several future scenarios to ethically evaluatepolicy options in these matters:
The EU deprioritises sustainability goals and reduces funding and subsidies in sensitive areas of sustainability and environmental protection. This puts the protection of the health and wellbeing of EU citizens and the resilience of the economy under threat, as well as the obligations towards future generations, leading to civil protest.
The EU maintains sustainability as a top priority. That is, it readjusts and increases spending on achieving environmental goals at the expense of boosting economic independence and technological sovereignty. The EU thus makes itself vulnerable to heightened technological and geopolitical rivalry, and under heightened geopolitical tensions with the US, key supply chains are disrupted with no adequate European alternatives.
A middle way is found. The EU channels more expenditure and support into areas that increase tech sovereignty and that are simultaneously consistent with the objectives of environmental sustainability, e.g. more energy-efficient European semiconductor technology or data centers powered by renewables. This approach slows down the achievements of both technological and sustainability goals in the short term.
Longer-term options: