Europe's digital sovereignty strategy is still built on industrial logic. The European Commission measures progress in chips produced, data centres built,and AI hubs launched.What it rarely measures is Europe's ability to shape the rules that keep these systems interoperable.True sovereignty in a networked world is not only about where infrastructure sits but about who participates in the design of the protocols that hold it together.
Protocols are the coordination layers that allow systems to communicate,verify information and exchange value.They are the shared languages that make the internet function.Yet they barely appear in Europe's strategic thinking about digital sovereignty.
The recent Franco-German Economic Agenda, which outlines a joint vision for digital sovereignty, refers to clouds and chips but not to the shared rules that make them interoperable. The Digital Commons EDIC aims to coordinate open source projects across borders, yet its scope stops short of the protocol layer.
This absence in strategy translates directly into how money is spent. The Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe allocate billions for infrastructure and research consortia but nothing for protocol governance or the shared infrastructure that continues once projects end. Europe funds applications and platforms while the coordination layers beneath them receive neither budget lines nor strategic attention.
This omission could prove costly. Europe could own every server on its territory and still depend on code and coordination logic written elsewhere. True digital sovereignty is not only achieved through hardware ownership but through participation in the design of the systems that bind everything together.
Building influence through participation
The first generation of internet protocols — TCP/IP, HTTPS, email — were public goods from the start. They were maintained by communities that included European universities,engineers and standards bodies. Europe once helped shape the open internet through contribution and collaboration rather than control. That tradition has not disappeared entirely, but it has lost institutional support and strategic direction.
A new generation of protocols has matured with the same governance principles. For example, Ethereum, launched in 2015, now coordinates distributed computation across thousands of independent operators. Matrix enables decentralised communication with production deployments in governments and militaries. IPFS supports peer-to-peer data storage at scale. These systems are governed through open discussion and technical consensus instead of corporate control. They raise questions that Europe claims to care about: who can participate, who verifies what happens and who decides when rules change.
Yet Europe's policy response focuses on regulating the services built on these protocols rather than participating in how the protocols themselves are governed. The EU mandates European Digital Identity Wallets through eIDAS 2.0 but provides no funding for the decentralised identifier protocols— technical standards that let identity systems work across platforms without central control— that make them interoperable.It regulates crypto-assets through MiCA while staying absent from the governance of the protocols those assets run on. It explores a Digital Euro without meaningfully engaging with the communities building programmable money protocols
The gap between policy and practice is not absolute. Europe has already proven it can lead in open protocols.France's Tchap connects 400,000 civil servants through Matrix, one of the world's largest public sector deployments of decentralised communication infrastructure. Germany's healthcare system and military also chose Matrix over proprietary alternatives. These production systems prove large-scale public sector adoption of open protocols works.
These successes prove the model works.The challenge is replicating it.Tchap operates independently of EU digital sovereignty funding programmes. Germany's institutional adoption happened through individual procurement decisions rather than coordinated policy guidance. What Europe lacks is not capability but a strategic framework that treats protocol development as essential to sovereignty.
The moment to redefine sovereignty
The internet’s first generation of protocols was treated as shared infrastructure. Europe helped shape that foundation through public research, standards bodies and academic collaboration. The next generation will decide how identity, data and value move across borders. If Europe wants to remain sovereign in this new phase, it must recognise participation in protocol governance as statecraft, not technical housekeeping.
Yet the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty last November showed how far Europe still has to go. It delivered landmark commitments on cloud sovereignty, AI infrastructure, and cybersecurity. France and Germany led with €12bn+ private investment pledges and launched a joint Digital Sovereignty Taskforce.Tellingly absent was any recognition of open protocol governance as public infrastructure on par with chips and data centres.
That choice will shape the kind of digital power Europe becomes. Building data centres and factories may strengthen capacity, but it will not secure autonomy. Real sovereignty depends on Europe’s willingness to maintain the commons it already relies on. Funding open protocols, taking part in their governance and embedding their principles into public procurement would signal a new kind of power: not ownership, but stewardship. That is where Europe’s sovereignty will be tested and earned.
About the Author
Kelly Roegies is a Brussels-based Policy Communications Strategist with over a decade of experience and is currently working for a European trade association. Outside her professional role, she writes and speaks about the role of open blockchains as digital public infrastructure and their potential to strengthen European digital sovereignty. She also serves as a Board Advisor at Furt’her an organisation supporting women in Web3 and AI, and contributes to the EU-funded Women in Digital Forum.