If I were a Member of the European Parliament, I would ask one question before supporting any new technology policy:

If a government outside Europe restricted our access to frontier AI tomorrow, how much of our technological future would still be under European control?

That is no longer a theoretical question.

A few weeks ago, we received a very real warning.

The US federal government instructed @Claude by Anthropic to suspend access to two of its most advanced AI models for every foreign national, including Anthropic's own foreign employees. Access was later restored, but the message was clear: a political decision made outside Europe could determine whether Europeans were allowed to access a frontier AI model.

Europe did not suddenly lose access to all AI.

But what happens if, one day, access to the leading American models is restricted more broadly?

We would still have European models, open-source systems we can operate ourselves, and Chinese alternatives.

But there is no guarantee that another major power would never make the same decision to protect its own strategic advantage.

AI is no longer just another software category.

It is becoming infrastructure.

It will shape education, healthcare, national security, research, law, finance, software development, manufacturing, communication, and almost every industry Europe depends on.

And right now, much of that infrastructure is controlled outside Europe.

This is not an anti-American argument.

I use American technology every day. Many of the best products in the world are American, and 🇪🇺 Europe should continue working closely with the 🇺🇸 United States.

But cooperation and dependency are not the same thing.

Technological sovereignty does not mean refusing to use foreign technology. It means having a real alternative when access to that technology changes.

If Europe is serious about remaining economically and politically independent, I believe it must do two things in 2026.

1. Treat European AI capability as strategic infrastructure

Europe needs to make AI innovation one of its highest industrial priorities.

Not by blindly funding every startup that adds "AI" to its pitch deck.

Not through another collection of slow grants, complicated applications, fragmented national programs, and twelve-month decisions.

Europe needs to support the entire AI stack:

• Computing infrastructure

• Frontier and open-weight models

• Research

• Developer tools

• AI applications

• Data infrastructure

• Security

• Talent

• Commercial adoption

The EU has already started moving in this direction.

The AI Factories initiative uses EuroHPC supercomputing capacity to support the development of European generative AI models. InvestAI was announced with the goal of mobilising EUR 200 billion, including EUR 20 billion for AI gigafactories. The Apply AI Strategy also explicitly aims to strengthen European technological sovereignty and increase AI adoption among SMEs.

These are serious initiatives.

But in Europe, the difficult part is rarely announcing the strategy.

The difficult part is executing it quickly enough.

Startups do not only need access to funding. They need affordable compute, faster decisions, simpler rules, early customers, experienced operators, and investors willing to finance technically ambitious companies before their success becomes obvious.

@Mistral AI is proof that Europe can build globally relevant AI technology.

But one successful European AI company is not technological sovereignty.

We need dozens of ambitious companies working on models, infrastructure, agents, security, robotics, industrial AI, scientific research, and products that have not been invented yet. Mistral itself has argued that Europe has the talent and industrial base required to become an AI leader rather than simply a market for foreign systems.

European governments should also become early customers!

Instead of only giving a startup a grant and wishing it good luck, public institutions should have fast and transparent ways to test qualified European technology.

A startup with a real customer learns faster than a startup writing another funding application.

European AI companies do not only need European money. They need European trust.

2. Build a real market for European alternatives

Europe should actively support startups offering alternatives to non-European platforms, applications, infrastructure, and online services.

That includes:

• Cloud infrastructure

• Analytics

• Search

• Communication

• Social platforms

• Payments

• Productivity tools

• Developer infrastructure

• Cybersecurity

• AI

• Consumer applications

This does not mean replacing every American or Chinese service with an inferior European copy.

Users should not be expected to use a worse product simply because it has an EU flag on its website.

But European products deserve a realistic opportunity to compete.

Public institutions, universities, companies, investors, and consumers should look at European alternatives before automatically choosing the largest American provider.

And these alternatives already exist.

• @Plausible Analytics is an independent, open-source analytics company incorporated in Estonia. It provides a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics, processes visitor data inside the EU, and runs on infrastructure owned by European companies.

• @Scaleway offers European-owned cloud and AI infrastructure, providing an alternative to relying entirely on AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. Its cloud regions and data centers are located in Europe, and the company explicitly focuses on European digital sovereignty.

• Qwant is building a French search engine hosted in Europe, designed around European privacy laws and without using personal search data for targeted advertising. It may not yet have Google's scale, but Europe will never develop independent search infrastructure if European alternatives are never given a real chance.

• @Mollie is a Dutch financial technology company helping European businesses accept payments and manage their money. It now operates across the entire European Economic Area, showing that European payment infrastructure can scale across national borders.

• NextCloud is another important example: an open-source European collaboration platform offering file storage, communication, office tools, and productivity features as an alternative to depending entirely on Microsoft or Google ecosystems.

And Europe has shown that it can build successful consumer platforms too.

• @BeReal. proved that a social network built in Paris could become globally relevant. The platform reached more than 40 million active users and was acquired by another French technology company, Voodoo, for EUR 500 million. That is exactly the kind of European consumer technology success story we need more of.

Europe needs more companies like these.

Not necessarily government-owned.

Not protected from competition.

Not supported simply because they are European.

But strong, independent companies built under European law, employing European talent, paying taxes here, and giving European customers a genuine choice.

The EU should support these companies through faster public procurement, startup-friendly tax systems, open-source funding, easier access to capital, and a genuinely unified digital market.

But we, as European users, also have a role.

When a good European alternative exists, we should at least consider it.

Try it.

Give feedback.

Recommend it.

Pay for it when it provides real value.

A European technology ecosystem cannot become independent if European consumers, companies, and governments automatically send their money, data, and attention to the same foreign platforms.

The proposed EU Inc. framework could be an important step. The Commission's current proposal would allow founders to establish a company fully online, within 48 hours, for less than EUR 100. If executed properly, it could reduce the legal fragmentation that makes building across 27 markets unnecessarily difficult.

But company registration is only the beginning.

Europe does not only need European startups.

It needs European customers willing to help those startups survive, improve, and eventually compete globally.

Europe also needs something with the speed, ambition, network, and founder density of@Y Combinator.

A truly European startup program could offer:

• One application for founders across the EU

• Fast investment decisions

• Standardised founder-friendly terms

• A strong alumni network

• Access to experienced founders and operators

• Support for expanding across the entire European market

• A culture that encourages global ambition from day one

It should be run with founders, not only policymakers.

It should measure success through companies built, customers gained, and global products created - not only through reports completed and funds distributed.

And most importantly, a young European should not feel that moving to the United States is the obvious requirement for building something globally important.

They should be able to build from Budapest, Paris, Tallinn, Berlin, Warsaw, Lisbon, Prague, or anywhere else in Europe - while still accessing a network with global ambition.

European citizens have a role too

Governments cannot build technological sovereignty alone.

We also vote with the products we use.

Where a strong European alternative exists, we should at least consider it.

Use European infrastructure where it makes sense.

Support European open-source projects.

Pay for privacy-friendly European tools.

Give feedback to early European startups.

Recommend them.

Become their first customers.

Not because American companies are bad.

Not because every European startup is automatically good.

But because no European technology ecosystem can become globally competitive without European customers willing to support it while it is still growing.

Kindness is free!!!

Trying a product is often free too.

And sometimes the smallest thing we can do for a founder is simply give their work a real chance.

Europe does not need isolation. It needs options.

We do not need to replace every American model, every Chinese platform, or every foreign online service.

But we cannot allow entire layers of Europe's economy to depend on decisions made by governments and companies outside Europe.

A strong Europe should be able to choose.

It should be able to cooperate without being completely dependent.

It should be able to regulate technology while also building it.

It should be able to protect privacy without making innovation impossible.

It should be able to produce global companies instead of only producing regulations for global companies.

The talent is here.

The researchers are here.

The founders are here.

The customers are here.

What we still need is more speed, more ambition, more capital, more trust, and a system that treats startups as strategic partners rather than potential problems.

If I were an MEP, these would be my two priorities:

1. Build independent European AI capability.

2. Make Europe the best place in the world to build and scale European alternatives.

Because sovereignty is not about closing ourselves off from the world.

It is about making sure the world cannot simply switch us off.

What European product do you already use instead of a non-European alternative?