The European Commission's Tech Sovereignty Package from June and the European Parliament's 2025 report on technological sovereignty have both pinpointed the same critical vulnerabilities in Europe's digital infrastructure: cloud and storage services, communication platforms, identity systems, and payments. The November 2025 Franco-German Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin reinforced these concerns with intergovernmental commitments to prioritize European alternatives.
New instruments such as the Digital Commons (DC-EDIC) and the Open Internet Stack are now rolling out, with stated intentions to fund and construct sovereign digital systems. Yet despite these initiatives and individual Member State efforts, a significant gap remains: Digital Public Infrastructure, or DPI, has received minimal policy attention despite being central to genuine digital sovereignty. While DPI activity exists across the EU and its Member States, the bloc has failed to organize these capabilities into a unified framework supporting its sovereignty agenda.
The current European debate on digital dependency emphasizes what the bloc should regulate and mitigate rather than what it can actively construct and operate. Europe's approach to digital sovereignty has centered on structural exposure reduction—excluding certain vendors, localizing data, and imposing procurement conditions. However, this differs fundamentally from building the capacity to construct, run, maintain and eventually replace foundational systems.
A practical test reveals the distinction: could the EU modify or substitute a given component without disrupting the systems built atop it? A European provider that proves as costly and difficult to abandon as its predecessor merely relocates the problem rather than solving it. Genuine capability means retaining the freedom to transfer data or terminate contracts. The bloc could begin developing this capacity immediately, starting with identity, payments and data exchange infrastructure.
The EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet exemplifies both progress and constraint. The EU has established shared rules, technical specifications and an open-source reference implementation, with Member States responsible for wallet provision. Over 550 companies and public authorities across 26 Member States, plus Norway, Iceland and Ukraine, participate in large-scale pilots. Yet this infrastructure ultimately depends on devices, operating systems and other components that European institutions do not control—a pattern that will repeat wherever European systems rest on externally governed foundations.
What Digital Public Infrastructure Means
DPI represents a globally recognized methodology for constructing public digital services with broad societal reach. It encompasses foundational digital capabilities—primarily digital identity, instant payment systems and trusted data exchange—built on open standards and accessible to both public and private users. The approach has gained international traction: the G20 achieved the first multilateral governmental consensus on DPI during India's 2023 presidency, the UN's Global Digital Compact treats it as a driver of inclusive digital transformation, and the World Bank has established dedicated programs around it. Dozens of countries across Africa and Latin America now incorporate DPI language into their core digital strategies, and regional bodies have adopted it as an organizing principle for cooperation.
For Europe, the DPI paradigm could unlock an "ecosystemic approach to digital policy and digital sovereignty", linking digital infrastructure logic with public service delivery in ways that advance European policy objectives. While DPI alone does not constitute a complete solution for building capability, proper deployment makes it an essential component of operationalizing European digital sovereignty.
Europe's Weak Position in Global DPI Discussions
The EU remains thinly represented in international DPI spaces, appearing primarily as a funder and occasional organizer rather than as a builder. This reflects a categorical framing: the bloc treats DPI mainly as a development concept relevant to partner nations rather than to itself. The Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) conducts substantial bilateral work rarely cited in multilateral forums, while the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) and the European External Action Service (EEAS)—which hold policy and diplomatic authority—have not articulated a DPI position. Even DG INTPA's voice carries less weight in international DPI convenings, including at the UN and the Global DPI Summit.
Yet the actual situation across Europe tells a different story. Multiple Member States operate functional DPI systems and have begun connecting their work to the global DPI and Digital Public Goods (DPGs) community. FranceConnect supplies a unified authentication layer across French public services serving tens of millions of users, with France participating in the Digital Public Goods Alliance and hosting its Annual Members Summit in Paris in November. Italy operates SPID, the Public Digital Identity System, alongside its pagoPA payments platform, serving one of the EU's largest populations. Estonia's X-Road data exchange layer has been implemented in 40 countries worldwide, while Denmark's MitID established digital-by-default as the standard for citizen-state interactions. Denmark requires digital self-service for numerous government services, with exemptions and alternatives available. eIDAS 2.0 provides governance architecture for mutual recognition of national identity schemes, with large-scale pilots involving more than 550 companies and public authorities.
The real constraint is not the absence of DPI capabilities in Europe. Rather, no institutional actor treats these systems as a unified class of infrastructure warranting coordinated investment and maintenance, much less as a cornerstone of Europe's digital sovereignty agenda. Because they lack this recognition, these critical systems receive no common funding for upkeep, no shared governance, and insufficient interconnection. Each was built by a single Member State with unified authority over standards, procurement and delivery. Achieving comparable coherence across twenty-seven Member States represents a coordination challenge that currently has no owner.
Learning from Global Leaders
Whether or not one embraces the DPI paradigm, these capabilities are essential for modern state functioning in the digital era. Europe's limited participation in the global DPI community of practice means forgoing critical opportunities for knowledge exchange that could prove vital as the bloc develops its own digital sovereignty vision. The Government of Brazil's Pix and the Government of India's Aadhaar were built incrementally, tested publicly and structured around politically clear problem statements. Ukraine's Diia delivers over 100 government services and has achieved adoption rates exceeding many Member States. European implementation teams largely absent from these knowledge-sharing spaces, as Brussels sends funders and policy officials rather than practitioners. The result is an offer of funding and finished frameworks when the DPI conversation seeks genuine co-development.
A more balanced Brussels Partnership would begin by making the EU's own implementations visible, then present them in multilateral forums as contributions rather than exports.
Practical Steps Within Europe
Advancing DPI within Europe requires neither a European DPI strategy, an EU-wide definition, nor a new legislative cycle. The necessary instruments already exist. The Interoperable Europe Act supplies governance mechanisms capable of connecting national systems without replacing them. Revisions to the Public Procurement Directives and broader procurement reform have begun permitting open standards as evaluation criteria, and Commission guidance could explicitly treat digital infrastructure procurement as industrial policy. The European Competitiveness Fund, once established, will serve as a vehicle for foundational system investment. The Digital Commons EDIC, bringing France, Germany and other Member States together to construct and maintain shared infrastructure, represents the most concrete near-term mechanism available.
The Tech Sovereignty Package proposes establishing a European Digital Public Infrastructure Steward Organization within the EU Open Source Strategy. This could prove valuable if it undertakes work currently unaddressed: maintaining a registry of DPI capabilities Member States operate, resourcing and connecting existing systems rather than only funding new initiatives, and serving as a unified contact point across DG CNECT, DG INTPA, the EEAS and national agencies. Without a dedicated budget and delivery mandate, it risks becoming another coordination layer in an already fragmented landscape.
Several straightforward actions are immediately available. Member States lacking registrations can list their implementations on the DPI Map and their digital public goods in the Digital Public Goods Alliance registry—requiring no new funding while directly addressing visibility gaps. Over the medium term, the Multiannual Financial Framework cycle, the 2027 high-level review of the Global Digital Compact, and the Global Europe Instrument implementation offer opportunities to connect European domestic work with international DPI cooperation.
The Choice Ahead
Europe faces not a choice between regulating or building, but between continuing to establish rules for infrastructure that others operate versus acquiring the capacity to operate infrastructure whose rules Europe sets and can modify. DPI does not independently resolve this challenge, but it represents a meaningful step forward and helps cultivate the institutional capabilities the bloc demonstrably requires to achieve digital sovereignty at scale.
