UK digital sovereignty policy lags as Europe cuts US tech reliance
A Commons briefing says Britain lacks an overarching policy as European governments and Airbus shift sensitive workloads from US vendors.
By Renata Fuchs · Policy Reporter
· 3 min read
The UK digital sovereignty policy is still more aspiration than program, according to a March House of Commons Library briefing, even as European public bodies and Airbus move parts of their technology stack toward domestic or open source suppliers. The gap matters for cloud, productivity software and AI infrastructure vendors selling into governments and regulated industries, where procurement is starting to include geopolitical control as well as price.
The Commons Library said the UK government “does not have an overarching policy on digital sovereignty,” while noting that ministers have described a push to build “sovereign capability” in selected technologies. The closest formal work cited is the UK Compute Roadmap, which calls for “sovereign, secure, and sustainable capability” and assigns compute as a priority for the UK Sovereign AI Unit.
Labour had previously proposed putting £2 billion into sovereign AI in 2025, according to the discussion around the policy. No current, detailed spending plan was set out in the material cited, leaving unclear how much capital the UK intends to commit, which suppliers would qualify, or how procurement rules would change.
What is the UK digital sovereignty policy?
Based on the Commons Library briefing, the UK does not have one overarching digital sovereignty policy. Its current approach is narrower: build domestic capacity in selected strategic technologies, with compute treated as a priority area for AI.
That puts Britain behind several European debates where digital sovereignty has become a procurement issue. At February’s Open Source Policy Summit, Finnish MEP Aura Salla said: “The EU runs on Microsoft. The US could turn us off inside one hour.” Louise McKeever, Ireland’s Government CIO, described digital sovereignty during UN Open Source Week as a government’s ability to retain control of its digital infrastructure, data and technologies amid cross-border data flows, AI and geopolitical risk. She called it a national security issue as well as a technology issue.
Ireland has already seen the issue affect a major software buy. A Microsoft procurement that could have been worth €1 billion was halted after what Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalization Minister Frankie Feighan called “matters of concern” raised by an interested party. Cian O’Callaghan, deputy leader of the opposition Social Democrats, said Ireland should consider alternatives including LibreOffice, Linux, Thunderbird and Open-Xchange for value-for-money reasons and to reduce dependence on US technology.
Where Europe is shifting away from US platforms
- Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state is replacing Microsoft SharePoint with Nextcloud and OpenProject.
- Bavaria is also moving toward digital sovereignty, though the moves described do not include a wholesale switch from Windows to desktop Linux.
- Airbus is migrating its most critical applications from AWS to Scaleway, a French cloud provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Airbus framed its cloud move as both commercial and strategic. Catherine Jestin, the company’s executive vice president of digital, said Scaleway made a competitive offer and that Airbus needed a sovereign cloud because some information is highly sensitive from a French and European perspective. She said the company wants that information to remain under European control.
The UK debate is not limited to Westminster. The Open Rights Group is running a petition calling for UK digital sovereignty. For technology suppliers, the signal is that sovereignty is moving from policy language into sales criteria in parts of Europe. In the UK, the same pressure is visible, but the procurement framework and funding remain less defined.
This story draws on original reporting from The Register.
