European sovereignty
Technology: Europe and its paradoxes
A few weeks ago at the VivaTech 2025 trade show, one of the world's largest technological innovation events, Paris welcomed the major figures in the sector - from artificial intelligence, to WEB3 and blockchain, to the quantum computer.
While the promises are numerous, so are the underlying tensions: Europe, and France in particular, are at a crossroads between technological ambition and structural constraints.
Published on 21 July 2025
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence is taking centre stage. After the explosion of generative AI, all eyes are now on a new generation of systems: agentic AI. These autonomous agents are no longer just responding to queries; They perceive, plan and act proactively in complex environments. The challenge? Reinventing productivity in companies, automating entire functions and catalyzing very high value-added uses in health, finance and cybersecurity. But this dynamic faces a concrete challenge: infrastructure development.
The computing power required for AI, especially for the most advanced agents, requires ever more and more efficient data centers... and available. However, France is currently experiencing structural delays in their development. The cause: long administrative procedures, growing environmental pressure, and a regulatory framework considered too rigid by manufacturers. Europe as a whole is facing similar bottlenecks, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, where data center projects are sometimes suspended for reasons of energy consumption or land use.
In an attempt to unblock the situation, the French government announced in 2024 that it wanted to speed up authorisations via a "project of major national interest" label. The stakes are all the more pressing as the other major technological powers are advancing at a forced march with an assumed strategy of domination.
In addition to these industrial challenges, there is growing environmental pressure. Data centers – energy-intensive by nature – are increasingly scrutinized, despite the consideration of energy issues for the sustainability of the sector. A United Nations report published this week reminds us that the major cloud providers are still far from carbon neutrality: between 2020 and 2023, indirect emissions (Scope 2), mainly related to the electricity consumption of their data centers, increased by an average of 150%1.
Despite these obstacles, we remain convinced that AI, blockchain and even the quantum computer will assert themselves not only as levers of industrial transformation, but also as instruments of strategic sovereignty.
It remains to be seen whether Europe will be able to equip itself with the necessary foundations – infrastructure, financing, administrative simplification – so as not to remain a mere spectator of the next technological wave.
1. Clarity.ai