- I'm cautiously optimistic. The Cloud and AI Development Act looks especially interesting:
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# Capacity
* at least tripling the EU’s data centre capacity within the next 5–7 years;
* simplifying and accelerating permitting and deployment of data centres;
* improving access to key resources such as energy, land, water and financing; ensuring sufficient computing capacity to support AI, cloud services and data-intensive applications.
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Given the prevalence of 'degrowth' ideas here in the EU and the severe NIMBY problem (even with stuff as basic as housing let alone data centres), I'm somewhat sceptical they are going to be able to pull this off.
- > simplifying and accelerating permitting and deployment of data centres
With the caveat (one hopes) of learning from the mistakes of the US.
- Based on the Iran war situation I don't think we should be building more datacentres for security. They are easy targets. We should be concentrating on resilience and that means distributing capacity and capability where possible.
- You’re describing having a bunch of data centers in different location and enough redundancy. What makes you against data centers themselves? They are just a way to pool resources to benefit from economy of scale. They don’t have to be enormous
- Centralised "economies of scale" mean consolidating risks into geographical and corporate ownership. I mean look at the current situation: that consolidation means there are a few corporate players, any of whom could just pull the plug on a huge amount of infrastructure in a war or other geopolitical mess.
Also we have a layer of abstraction above the datacentre now which is the cloud provider. And that does not necessarily (especially in our case) have an economic advantage. And it is again a single point of failure. One cloud provider compromise and the scope of compromise is across multiple datacentres and businesses and potentially national governments.
I'm suggesting bringing a lot of stuff back in house or within tens of thousands of small datacentres where there's a few racks max. And we keep our abstraction depth low.
I'd go as far as designing things to be permanently disconnected or just occasionally connected these days. Even single-user stuff reaches into clouds and datacentres when it doesn't need to.
- Large domestic corporates pulling the plug in a war seems unlikely to impossible as wars tend to go with what are effectively command economies.
- It's not just pulling the plug. It's serious economic disparity between regions and legally mandated espionage as well.
- If the EU had own large corporate hyperscalers that would be an issue there for the EU?
- Yes it would still. Which is why I think the process is misguided. I mean look at Hungary which was a near miss. It needs to be resilient to state failure as well.
This means that the entire idea of a corporate EU spanning hyperscaler should never exist.
- State failure is something the Europeans have experience in dealing with.
That aside: how much would that cost in lost economies of scale?
- For distributing having more data centers seems like a prerequisit to me.
One can argue about size etc, though.
- You could have written exactly same thing about refineries - from Russian perspective the bigger refinery the bigger target for Ukrainians.
- Degrowth was only popular in Germany, UK and Spain. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/no-solid-scientific-basis-deg...
Germany and UK follow a the no growth and it is very unpopular. Spain's economy gives a shit and grows.
- I'm more than cautious too:
> ... initiatives that are interconnected and mutually reinforcing across each stage of the value chain, from chips, to infrastructure, to software, cloud and AI, and in synergy with past and ongoing initiatives such as AI Factories and AI Gigafactories
Software / Cloud: yes, Europe can try to do something but I doubt it. Although it should be pointed out that the EU has one software company in the Top 100 companies in the world by market cap. One. And it's that fucking lame piece of uber-shit that SAP is.
SAP: that's what europeans can do. While the US has Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, CloudFlare, etc. Not that these are all great companies but these are heavyweights compared to that pointless, irrelevant, turd that SAP is.
Chips? Besides ASML (which is only part of the chain), we're a wasteland and ASML is mostly US-owned.
Not going to see the next Intel / AMD / NVidia from the EU: that simply is not going to happen. It just won't.
AI gigafactories? Bull-fucking-crap.
The only area where Europe can try something is software but this must be put in perspective: SAP vs all the US software companies.
Don't forget all we could do is SAP. And that is a monstrous piece proprietary lock-in shit.
- > Chips?
Only ST, NXP, Nexperia, Osram, and a bunch more obscure ones. It's not a boom, but it's far from a wasteland
- Infineon as well, but all those EU semi companies mostly make cheap low margin chips that more or less compete with the commodity chips of China and Taiwan but not with the IP from the US or even Israel who designs and sometimes also makes mostly high margin CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, switching fabric, cellular modems, etc stuff that the EU uses and imports a lot but has no domestic players in.
In that regard yes, the EU semi industry is kind of a wasteland, considering how big the EU and how small its semi industry is.
- NOKIA was the only competitive/innovative EU company until US funds with high stakes in MS bought it, planted their trojan horse of a CEO and made it into a headless chicken sacrificed for a chance of MS to stay relevant in the mobile industry.
- ok how would you recommend to get started? Doing nothing will change nothing.
- They should stop sending people to jail for operating a website with UGC, a public WiFi hotspot, or for completing the wrong bureaucratic forms. However free the US is, Europe is the opposite extreme. Everything has a bureaucratic process and if you don't do it right you go to jail. I'm stuck there and scared to do anything innovative.
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- Make the work market, business market and everything 90% less complicated across EU. I would actually dictatorially made all work and company laws obsolete. EU company, flat tax 20%, goodbye. One month no reason firing. I just thought about how crazy is the car situation, you move somewhere with your car, for couple months and you SHOULD reregister your car, because of law and insurance, costs money, then you go back and again deregister and it costs money again. Millions of things like this. As if there cant be one EU car register and just insurance flow based on where you reside. Even the residence is different by every counry. Some need you to change “permanent” residence and ID and everything it touches. Some you just say i live here now, here is electricity bill, done. Law harmonization is the stupidest thing. Either make one EU law or do not put nose into it. Every country makes it differently, some even more strict than EU requires for no reason.
- > EU company, flat tax 20%, goodbye. One month no reason firing.
thats how you get a hyper capitalist nightmare like south korea. firing with less bureaucracy makes sense but if your company really needs it that is already a legal reason, american style at will employment just takes away stability from workers.
for the tax part i support lower or zero VAT (taxing consumption is always regressive) but we need to replace it with high and progressive taxes on paid out profits, both dividends and buybacks/indirect payouts. at least 60% for the top bracket. also capping total comp to 5x the companys median like in some nordic countries.
- ARM?
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- Where is the investment coming from (the capital markets union/savings and investment union isn't there so far)? How to make building infrastructure faster? Could some other regulation be removed to aid AI and tech use?
Not convinced adding regulation alone will solve things in European tech.
- Trump's actions are pushing Europeans towards federalisation as a broader trend.
More specifically things like this are happening quietly in the background:
https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/eu-inc-maki...
This mandates a few things:
Countries must do certain things in English to ensure a common language.
Simple liquidation for bankruptcies, register once and operate across the EU.
Places like Germany have loads of talent but are cumbersome to setup a startup etc. This reduces that.
Things won't change overnight but a decade from now things will look a bit different, capital markets won't match the US by then but I expect the dependence trend will start to have reversed. There is no crystal ball for these things.
- There is stuff happening but I think most of it is addressing side issues (and cannot address some cores outside of an actual USofE, if then).
For example, how would that overcome local resistance to new infrastructure or reduce the huge amount of (local) regulations in a significant way?
- The US has these issues as well as still has a strong tech sector, you also have to keep in mind a successful outcome for the EU won't be what the US has right now either. You get charts like this floating around the internet: https://postimg.cc/Yh8TPs8g
Nearly always presented as a 'dick swinging' look how great we are chart in a EU vs US vs China stand off. However it reveals flaws in the US as well. A successful tech sector in the EU will be lots of small bubbles where the combined area is somewhat approximates what is in the US and China.
A handful of giants is not desired here in the EU, you can see the issues this presents in the US as well, chiefly: it's distorting the political system to becoming like Russia. Oligarchy.
That's not even getting in to the chart is deeply flawed but that's not the point I'm making.
- Yes, certain issues are found in the US, too, but doesn't mean they shouldn't perhaps be addressed.
Some things also might need scale at least in aggregate and either tech leads to some sort of Coasian singularity or having a lot of small things comes with additional transaction costs.
- >A handful of giants is not desired here in the EU
Then explain the giant Airbus. Or the giant VW. Or the giant Siemens. Or the giant Dassault. Or the giant ABB. Or the giant Stellantis. Or the giants Shell and Total. Or the giants BNP Paribas and Santander.
This whole "EU hates giants" trope being repeated on HN is just unfounded cope at EU's failure to scale and grow its newer domestic players to challenge the ones from the US and China, so they spin its weakness and failures as some form of benevolent virtue the EU is doing for the world by not building giant companies, when the truth is it just can't even though the EU would love to have US style giants as they bring in a lot of revenue along with geopolitical soft and hard power the EU is severely lacking ATM. If EU actually hated giants it would break up Airbus, Siemens, Dassault, Stellantis and others into smaller companies for more competition instead of supporting mergers that support its domestic monopolies.
> it's distorting the political system to becoming like Russia. Oligarchy.
It isn't. EU's own domestic giants are good enough at distorting EU politics without being FANG size. See VW political spending after Dieselgate. Or the political spending of the auto sector in general to shape regulations in their favor since they control so many jobs across EU's largest economies.
If you have a corrupt government that gives in to corporate interests, it's not the size of your companies that's the cause, it's the corruption of your elected leaders, since no company is above the government no matter how big it would get, as the government has the courts, police and military which no company can match, which is why companies always bend over to government requests
A Russia style oligarchy comes if the government gets too big, powerful and unaccountable, not from the size of corporations. Putin didn't attack Ukraine because corporate Russian lobbyist paid him to. In fact most Russian businesses, oligarchs and entrepreneurs got absolutely wrecked by Putin's idea to invade Ukraine, they never wanted this because they have more to lose from this.
It's the government that fucks shit up for the people, not the corporations. Big corporations just dance to the tune the government plays.
- It's ironic that the EU has adopted English as their primary language now that England is no longer in the EU.
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- I look forward to the day we have a sovereign CPU, RAM, storage, ancillary ICs, production line, supply chain, software stack and associated infra than I can walk into a shop and buy and use myself.
I don't think it'll ever happen though. These initiatives are mostly fluff. Throw everything into AI because it's the current fad but not even look at stuff that runs everything RIGHT NOW.
If anything was to happen war-wise, we'll be running everything on recycled trash.
- >If anything was to happen war-wise, we'll be running everything on recycled trash.
ESMC should be online in a few years with 16nm class ICs. That will be tech that's over a decade old at that point but it's also "good enough" for anything except AI training.
- That's enough to do useful work. AI training is useless if you don't have something that'll do office work and supply chain logistics.
- We have now sovereign CPUs but we are struggling to get HPC ones. They will be there soon though in 5-6 years. RAM is already possible for Europe to manufacture if they can get the fab. Supply chain remains a question mark for the raw materials. Software stack is almost there.
In effect, I would say we are around 60% there. The most important thing actually missing is Fabs. Everything else I see a straightforward path with money and time.
- HPC will always be years away.
There is a big structural problem in Europe with these sort of initiatives: people receive grants for attacking identified problems; if you actually solve the problem then you have to find a new problem for your next grant, so it's best to not actually solve the problem but claim your next proposal will.
Combine that by not actually wanting to reward people properly when problems are solved and you have the root of why eurotech has totally stagnated.
- I would turn it differently. The grants are awarded but they come with requirements that are impossible to satisfy without severely degrading the quality of the product.
1. Most grants are one-off before the EU moves onto new fields of grants. Therefore, there is no way to build a deep expertise in a field for one particular center.
2. Most procurement are very top-down 1990s manner. This is no way to build infrastructure (by mandate). You need to fund competing proposals and then select good things from each of them. Instead, EU has this propensity to award only one single grant, which means every single big org that will be affected by this grant is on the proposal (probably), which then means that there is no room for opinionated stuff.
3. Most EuroHPC funding is national co-funding based, which means same proposal needs to be submitted 1 + x times where x is the number of countries in the proposal. Due to requirements of EuroHPC, x > 3. So, 4 proposals, 4 negotiation for any single idea. It is such a mess.
This in addition to bureaucracy where there is no dynamism in contract negotiations. There is no flexibility in rules. The EuroHPC and every single govt would be okay with projects failing rather than allowing for a small monetary rule change which allows the project to succeed. (This is not even about getting more money but transferring money from one bucket to another in the same project).
I can go on, but these are structural problems why HPC in Europe stagnates every day.
- No true Scostsman, aye me lad. Now really, because big bang doesn't work, means nothing else should be even tried? Are you even from the EU to actually know, or just feel bothered by the anti-US sentiment oozing from those initiatives? If that helps, my feeling is that it's not anti-US, just a normal reaction to the acts and thoughts of the beloved best-leader-ever ruling the US right now, and his faithful elite. It's trying to protect oneselves, maybe a bit of rallying under the (blue) flag, and defeatism has no place in it.
- I'm in the UK. My partner is German. I spend a lot of time in the EU.
It's really the "this is fine dog" realising that it's not fine and apathy and poor governmental and corporate decisions over the last 30 years have blown up in our faces.
- OK, so a bunch of larger behind-the-times EU tech companies get a few billions over a few years. So what? If they were capable of executing before, they would have been competing already. Some bureaucrat is not going to conjure up desired qualities.
- I would rather we be great at tech and sovereign as byproduct than try to copy Americans, poorly.
Trump's admin is trying to put breaks on new AI models. Meanwhile we will make procurement even heavier and slower with additional requirements and add more regulation for checkbox enforcement so massive inefficient enterprises can keep newcomers out.
That said it was a cool material to test my new open webui setup with a docling container for large pdfs. Works like a charm. I highly recommend it.
- What part is copying the US?
- Not sure what to make of this. There is also IPCEI-CIS https://www.8ra.com/ipcei-cis/ but I can't see that in that strategy. Or it is buried somewhere deep.
There's going to be a Open Source Policy and Ecosystem Forum on June 8 in Brussels https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-policy-ecosys...
- Funny how they are publishing free advertising for X, fb, yt etc. on their website. This is telling more about the situation than any speaker at the conference will be able to do.
- The world isn't built in a day. After years of nothing, the last few months a lot more EU bodies and even national politicians/officials have been joining Mastodon.
It's certainly nowhere near the majority yet, but things are clearly moving.
- Commentary (in French) from CNLL, the French Open Source Business Association: https://cnll.fr/news/strategie-open-source-europeenne-deux-r...
Here's a TL;DR in English:
CNLL communiqué on the adopted EU Tech Sovereignty Package (3 June 2026)
On 3 June 2026, the European Commission adopted the Tech Sovereignty Package — Communication, Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) proposal, and EU Open Source Strategy. The CNLL confirms the essence of the historic shift it had welcomed in late May: open source is elevated to the rank of an instrument of European industrial policy. But the CNLL publicly regrets two significant setbacks introduced between the leaked draft and the adopted text:
- "Open source first" (CADA Article 41) — the title is ambitious, the body is weak. The verb is "encourage", word for word the verb used by France's Digital Republic Law since 2016, with broad derogations ("security, total cost, and any other duly justified objective criterion") and no documented or auditable assessment requirement. The phrase "open source first" appears only in the article's title, not in its body.
- "Public money, public code" (CADA Article 42) — reduced to a conditional cataloguing obligation: the article imposes nothing on the decision to release software, only on the mechanism when an entity discretionarily chooses to do so. The structural publication obligation that the European open source industry has defended for ten years is not in the CADA.
Two further lexical softenings in the Communication: "key lever" became "crucially contributes"; "sovereignty-washing" was removed. The draft promised to go beyond the limit France has known since 2016 — the adopted text reproduces it at European scale.
Confirmed acquis: the OSI definition is now anchored (incl. EUPL); APELL (the European Open Source Business Association) is named in the document; Open Source Maintenance Instrument with fork capability and security-mirroring programme are retained; envelope doubled from 1 to 2 B€ / 7 years (public + private); EuroStack cited in CADA IA study footnote.
The CADA is still a proposal. The CNLL calls for industry and MEP mobilisation over the next twelve months on four priorities: (1) transform Article 41 into an enforceable obligation in the trilogue, with documented/auditable assessment of derogations, in convergence with European OSS editors signatories of the 3 June open letter; (2) mobilise the existing national legal acquis (Article 16 Digital Republic, Article L. 123-4-1 Code de l'éducation, Italian Article 68, German IT-Planungsrat, Dutch frameworks), which becomes proportionally more important; (3) defend the licence-based legal definition of OSS; (4) neutralise the practice of sovereignty washing — push enforceable jurisdictional immunity criteria (no CLOUD Act / FISA exposure) at the highest CADA sovereignty levels.
- Europe started going backwards from some time. Energy is becoming more expensive, raw materials are becoming more expensive, industry is thickening, jobs are closed, education is not ok, most important tech developments are happening elsewhere, we don't have a thriving startup environment, most large tech companies are established elsewhere.
Maybe we will wake up at some point and do something.
Discourses won't put foot on the table and won't help with economic competition.
- Poland is doing fine. Southern Europe is doing very well. Greece is growing superfast. Switzerland is still one the richest and successful countries in the world. Denmark is amazing.
Germany and the UK are the sick men of Europe. France is going brankrupt. Careful with confusing the 19th century superpowers with the whole of Europe. Yes cost of living has increased by which i mean real wages have stalled in many places, but this is worldwide and mostly due to external causes such as rocketing gas and oil prices. If we succeed in making lasting peace with Russia and getting access again to their natural resources, a new golden age may well commence.
- > Southern Europe is doing very well. Greece is growing superfast.
Citation needed.
- I mean, yes - if your biggest external source of energy declares war, and your hitherto trusted defence partner goes rogue - it's going to have a chilling effect and the measures needed to address that will hit both the economy and the populous
- Why would measures aiming to create more energy supply necessarily hit the economy and the populous?
- Losing a chunk of your energy supply, while simultaneously having to build a bunch of new energy supply, will hit the economy.
- Yes, losing hurts, but building new supply would necessarily hurt why (instead of being accretive)?
- Because it will cost money, and that money has to come from somewhere.
If you have 300 froblets per month being shipped to you, and suddenly you have only 200 froblets arriving and you have to spend £5 billion building a froblet factory, then you're both going to be short on froblets and high on expenses at least until the factory is built.
And yes, in the long run you'll have built the factory, will be getting a safer supply of froblets, and everything will be sunshine and roses, but while you're building it all that's an extra expense that you have to find the money for.
- Investment costs money but why would investments hurt? What hurts is the loss of supply.
The money is spent on something and comes (hopefully) with a positive RoI and NPV. And you could borrow to build to reduce own capital outlay.
I don't think there was a lot of new energy production was put into place, though.
- RoI isn't instant. If it takes you 20 years to build as much supply as you need then you're spending money over that time to try and get back to where you were.
And spending money on one thing means you don't have it for something else. Even if you're borrowing, you can borrow less for other things, unless you want to break your credit score, which would also hurt.
- Your first paragraph is describing the effect of the loss of supply, not the investment.
I don't think Europe was anywhere close to borrowing capacity, so plenty of scope there.
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- I want sovereignity from the Brussels bureaucracy. The most universally despised incompetents of the continent.
- The EU parasites have plenty of bootlickers in the HN clientele. Likely all from across the pond or being on the dole themselves.
89 points by jrepinc 6 hours ago | 60 comments