Results of the last digital summit: A bit of digital sovereignty

At last year’s digital summit, digital sovereignty was the central theme. The German and French governments jointly promised a new dimension of efforts to become more independent from US tech companies and the erratically acting US President.

This was preceded, among other things, by the first sanctions by the USA against judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and a debate about what would happen if the Microsoft services, which also dominate German administrations, were used as US leverage, for example in the customs dispute. “Digital sovereignty has costs. But digital dependence has even higher costs,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) in his closing speech.

And now, a year later? A number of projects were initiated or implemented over the course of the year, such as a procurement process for a sovereign cloud for applications with artificial intelligence. In his speech on Monday morning, Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) praised the good cooperation with the French government on digital sovereignty.

But there is criticism from civil society that real change is missing: "Digital sovereignty works in Germany like quitting smoking. You want to. Just not today," criticized Markus Beckedahl from the Center for Digital Rights and Democracy in the run-up to this year's summit. At any given moment, there is always a pragmatic reason to stay with the Big Tech monopolists. And if the change does come later, there will be a pragmatic reason against it.

The organization criticizes that the federal government is not only making too few efforts to be more independent from the USA and Big Tech, and that the state continues to pay millions for the services of Microsoft and other US companies. But also that the government is worsening the conditions for digital sovereignty: For example, in the federal budget for the coming year, the expenditure item for the Sovereign Tech Agency, which is intended to use state funds to promote the development and maintenance of open source infrastructure, has been reduced by 370,000 euros to around 27.4 million.