Think tanks want presidential candidates to take up the digital problem to give it an ambitious dimension.
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Two think tanks suggest specific courses of action to the various candidates for the 2022 presidential election. are called Le Cercle de la donne and Agora 41, which emanates from the very official National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (Anssi). Seven concrete proposals are formulated in a report entitled “Digital sovereignty: an attempt to reconquer”.
The authors do not mince their words. They believe that when it comes to digital, we are “in a situation of dependence or vassalage towards non-European countries or actors.” In other words, we depend on the Americans and the Chinese. “We quickly find ourselves with American software running on Chinese equipment”, can we read in particular.
The seven proposals cover the technological spheres, of course, but also economic, legal and, crucially, research and national education. Two examples, in addition to training and apprenticeship: stimulate investment, by exempting European companies from property tax if they agree to stay on European soil to create jobs there; arming competition law to better control non-European operators who take advantage of the loopholes in the system to better penetrate it.
The economists and experts who wrote this note do not hide it: they propose to impose European legal sovereignty for the most sensitive digital data. It is a small revolution in European law. It is about our sovereignty in the face of a conquering China and the United States. The message is clear: Europe must seize the term “sovereignty”. Complicated at 27, but a major challenge for the French presidency of the Council of Europe until next June, with the presidential election in the middle, in April.