Airbus and others call for sovereign infrastructure fund, buy European

Airbus, Dassault Systemes and more than 90 smaller European technology companies and lobby groups have urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to create a sovereign infrastructure fund to ramp up public investments in cutting-edge technologies.

The companies and groups said recent US and EU developments and US measures underscored the urgency of Europe taking measures to maintain its strategic autonomy in key sectors.

"Europe needs to recover the initiative, and become more technologically independent across all layers of its critical digital infrastructure, from logical infrastructure - applications, platforms, media, AI frameworks and models - to physical infrastructure - chips, computing, storage and connectivity," they said in an open letter dated March 14 seen by Reuters.

"Europe's current multiple dependencies create security and reliability risks, compromise our sovereignty and hurt our growth," they said.

The letter said a sovereign infrastructure fund was key to financing such an ambitious goal, especially in the capital-intensive parts of the value chain such as quantum technologies and chips.

The letter also proposed that governments adopt a "buy European" policy in procurement tenders to drum up demand and encourage businesses to invest.

"The aim is not to exclude non-European players, but to create space where European suppliers can legitimately compete (and justify investment)," it said.

Signatories to the letter include French cloud services provider OVH Cloud and its peers in other EU countries, the European Software Institute, European Startup Network, German AI Association, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) and French public investment bank BPI France.

The letter was also addressed to EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen.