Reflections on Power, Diplomacy, and Strategic Foresight

Europe’s Digital Sovereignty: Power Is Infrastructure
By José Parejo, Founding Partner, José Parejo & Associates

Europe speaks often of strategic autonomy. Yet in digital affairs, sovereignty is not a matter of treaties or speeches. It is the hard reality of infrastructure. Nations do not compete through rhetoric; they compete through resources, grids, cables, chips, spectrum and compute. In an age defined by artificial intelligence, sovereignty means controlling the arteries of data.

The European Union commands a communications ecosystem worth nearly one trillion euros, about 4.7% of its GDP, employing over a million people. But scale is not supremacy. Europe covers only 40% of its population with stand-alone 5G, compared with 91% in North America and 45% in Asia-Pacific. It has installed just 320 edge-cloud nodes, against a stated target of 10,000. Only eight operators have launched commercial edge offers. These are not minor delays. They are structural gaps.

The true choke point, however, is not radio spectrum but electricity. Artificial intelligence runs not in “the cloud” but on electrons. In 2024, European data centers consumed 96 terawatt-hours of power. By 2035 they will consume 236 TWh — an increase of 150%. In Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London, data centers already absorb 33–42% of local electricity supply. In Dublin, the figure approaches 80%.

Seu ai pdf overeignty is not abstract, it is physical. Without energy, there is no autonomy.

The European Commission has recognized the urgency. InvestAI, a €200 billion program, seeks to triple data capacity in five to seven years. Yet the arithmetic is unforgiving. Where connecting a new data campus can take seven to ten years — and in some cases up to thirteen — investment flees. Europe does not lack ambition. It lacks time.

Here Ortega y Gasset is more relevant than any policy memo. “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.” Translated crudely: I am myself and my circumstance — if I do not save it, I do not save myself. For Europe, the circumstance is structural dependence on foreign semiconductors, foreign cloud providers, foreign platforms. Sovereignty will not be rescued by slogans. It will be saved only if Europe rescues its circumstance: the physical infrastructure on which digital life depends.

This is not a European problem alone. The geometry of power has shifted. Economically, it is increasingly bipolar — Beijing and Delhi define the gravitational axis of production and demography. Strategically, it is triangular — Washington remains the guarantor of oceans, capital and security. Europe risks becoming the fourth corner of a triangle that never closes.

For corporations, the implications are immediate. Energy bottlenecks are not “sustainability” issues, they are continuity risks. Latency is not a user-experience metric, it is strategic advantage. Contracting secure electricity and compute capacity is now as decisive as raising capital or entering a new market. The boardroom is no longer a financial chamber; it is a navigation table for geopolitics.

Spain, often overlooked, may yet prove pivotal. With lower grid congestion, abundant renewables and strategic geography — connected to Western Europe, North Africa and Latin America — it could emerge as Europe’s hinge for digital flows. The future of Europe’s sovereignty may not be decided in Brussels, but in the places where electrons and data converge most reliably.

History will not remember how many AI startups Europe founded in 2025. It will remember whether Europe built the grids, nodes and energy capacity to sustain them. The economy of the future is not oil or gas, it is data. And sovereignty in that economy will belong only to those who govern the structures that innovation requires.

— José Parejo

Founding Partner, José Parejo & Associates

Sunday CEO Strategic Insights | August 31, 2025

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