Franco-Dutch tech dialogue.

Europe will bridge the tech gap. Technological leadership translates directly to economic power, political influence and military capability. At a time of growing geopolitical competition, technological capabilities are strategic assets and sources of power. To strengthen Europe’s prosperity and security, we must work together to strengthen and scale Europe’s technology ecosystem.

Europe has the capabilities to lead in the technologies that will define its future sovereignty, resilience and competitiveness. Europe is home to world-leading companies, talent, research, technology and industrial capabilities. The challenge now is to connect these strengths across the value chains of critical technologies and to translate excellence into industrial scale and economic security. This requires a broad European approach to critical technologies, while focusing our efforts on reducing strategic dependencies, growing European capabilities across the different technology stacks and seizing current and future market opportunities.

Europe must translate innovation into scale, starting with the European Single Market. We must continue to research, develop, build, deploy and integrate technologies in Europe, while creating sustainable business models that can compete and lead globally. This requires a strong European base, which can only be achieved through strategic investments and the right framework conditions (including streamlined regulation, compute and energy infrastructures, capital, procurement, talent and international partnerships) and tailored policy instruments for European companies to scale and grow into global leaders.

On capital, Europe must ensure seamless funding from lab to fab, including industrial deployment. Complementing private capital, which must be catalysed through the completion of the Savings and Investment Union (SIU), and Member States’ support, the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) should ensure a continuum of funding opportunities and instruments to serve European competitiveness and strategic autonomy in critical technologies. In the meantime, the Scaleup Europe Fund and a possible future European Strategic Technology Equity Fund (STEF) should provide large equity investments to promising European firms, anchoring them in Europe.

Among the different critical technologies, AI and computing power are fundamental to Europe’s future. These critical technologies will increasingly shape our prosperity, security and strategic autonomy. Europe must remain indispensable in the AI and compute tech stack. These technologies are increasingly interdependent: (frontier) AI drives demand for compute; compute depends on (advanced and efficient) semiconductors; semiconductors depend on critical minerals, materials and equipment; and photonics and quantum technologies underpin the future of compute and enable breakthroughs across a wide range of critical technologies. The EU already has a global advantage in the production of lithography machines and a strong position in embedded AI. Leveraging its own assets, Europe must pursue an ambitious technological leadership and sovereignty agenda in the age of AI.

To this end, we support the European Commission’s new focus on better connecting European supply and demand. The EU Tech Sovereignty Package, including the Chips Act 2.0 (CAII) and the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), provides an important framework and starting point to serve these objectives. In this sense, we support the introduction of targeted and proportionate European content criteria in public procurement and public aid for the digital sector and infrastructures. We also call for an ambitious and protective European framework for cloud sovereignty that ensures high protection of sensitive data, particularly against risks arising from extraterritorial legislation in the Tech Sovereignty Package and the revision of the Cybersecurity Act (CSA2).

More generally, Europe should develop critical capabilities in leading digital technologies in areas where there is strong demand and a need for sovereign capabilities such as AI, defense & space, energy & electrification, connected/automated vehicles and telecommunications. The Tech Sovereignty Package should therefore combine a more risk-based supply policy with instruments that create predictable European demand and reward value creation in the single market. France and the Netherlands want to double down on targeted European action on frontier AI model development and access and look forward to further discussing this during the upcoming dedicated European Council on AI and with the EU Special Envoy on Industrial AI.

Looking at the future of compute, Europe must secure its technological leadership in quantum technologies and photonics. We call for the upcoming Quantum Act to secure European leadership by supporting a coordinated European approach to quantum activities. Key to this is ensuring that we build complementary quantum and photonics ecosystems in European Member States that together form a European quantum stack. Public procurement should be an important enabler of the development of the European quantum ecosystem. It will be key to ensure a European quantum value chain that is not subject to non-European extraterritorial laws and regulations.

Government and industry must deliver together. Leveraging strong public and private research, industry will take the lead in identifying concrete strategic projects and investment opportunities, while governments and the European Commission will help remove barriers and create the right conditions for delivery at speed and scale, while rewarding value creation in the EU. We will focus on practical outcomes: bankable projects, investment commitments, and stronger links between European demand and supply. Furthermore, incentivizing technology transfers should be part of our policy options. Europe will bridge the gap by strengthening its resilience against future shocks and crises. Public-private cooperation among willing countries will be essential.

France and the Netherlands will work together to make this happen in Europe. Today’s dialogue is a next step towards a broader European effort. France and the Netherlands already fruitfully work together through the Franco-Dutch innovation pact, established three years ago. Both nations are very much willing to step up our efforts to raise this to a European level, with the European Commission, other Member States and leading European tech companies from the European Tech Creators Coalition (TCC) to strengthen Europe’s position across critical technology value chains and bridge the gap between European technological excellence and industrial scale.