A Microsoft outage lasting nearly 24 hours affected millions of users in 74 countries and disrupted tools like Teams messaging and Outlook email. This shutdown occurred as EU national leaders met in Dublin for their first meeting on artificial intelligence. The failure of these services prompted calls from European officials to control their own digital infrastructure.
Calls for digital sovereignty
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch told leaders that only 20% of European digital services run on European infrastructure. He said money spent on U.S. or Chinese technology could be reinvested to finance European research and development on infrastructure Europe controls. Finnish European Parliament lawmaker Aura Salla said the EU has outsourced too much of its digital infrastructure to actors outside the EU. She suggested that government contracts must support European technology.
Sebastian Toffaletti, secretary general of the Digital SME Alliance, said the outage is a reminder of the systemic risk created by concentrating digital infrastructure with a few global tech giants. In the U.K., Liberal Democrat tech spokesperson Victoria Collins said the outage demonstrated the need for a digital sovereign strategy, stating: "We need urgent action to stop relying on a handful of companies." German Social Democratic Party lawmaker Johannes Schatzl said the event raises questions about public procurement. "Digital sovereignty must be measured by whether we can remain operational even during outages like this," he said. French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that Europe’s independence cannot be outsourced and must be built at home. An EU diplomat at the talks said the region needs to pick up speed, permitting and investment to have sovereignty.
