Europe

The European Union should be capable of acting decisively where action at European scale is necessary.

This is particularly important for:

• defence;
• energy;
• strategic infrastructure;
• industrial policy;
• scientific research;
• digital sovereignty;
• environmental policy;
• telecommunications;
• semiconductors;
• medicines and pharmaceutical production;
• batteries and energy storage;
• rail infrastructure;
• satellites and space infrastructure;
• cloud computing and data centres;
• trade;
• major technological programmes.

Europe should not remain a political structure capable of creating rules but incapable of defending its strategic interests or building the infrastructure required to exercise genuine sovereignty.

I support movement toward a more federal European structure.

Certain powers currently fragmented between national governments could be exercised more effectively at European level.

This should not mean centralising every political decision.

Local, regional, national, and European institutions should each exercise powers at the level where they can be handled most effectively.

The European Union should have a genuine government accountable to democratic institutions rather than concentrating political legitimacy in a single all-powerful president.

A stronger European executive should be responsible before the European Parliament and subject to meaningful parliamentary scrutiny.

The European Union should also possess greater fiscal capacity, allowing it to finance strategic infrastructure, research, defence, industrial programmes, energy systems, and other projects whose scale exceeds what individual states can efficiently achieve alone.

A stronger European Union must also become more democratic.

Increasing European power without increasing political accountability would simply reproduce at European scale the excessive concentration of executive power that I criticise at national level.

The European Parliament, national parliaments, citizens, and mechanisms of direct democratic participation should therefore have meaningful influence over European political decisions.

European referendums should be possible for appropriate major political, constitutional, or strategic questions.

Direct democratic mechanisms should complement representative democracy rather than replace it.

A federal Europe should ultimately derive its legitimacy not only from national governments, but directly from European citizens.

Europe should be capable of defending its interests independently.

This includes military capability, energy security, industrial capacity, critical technologies, digital infrastructure, scientific research, telecommunications, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, transport infrastructure, and essential supply chains.

Strategic autonomy does not require isolation.

Europe can cooperate closely with other countries while maintaining the capacity to act independently when interests diverge.

Public investment should be used aggressively where necessary to create or maintain European capabilities in strategically important sectors.

Short-term profitability should not determine whether Europe retains the industrial, scientific, technological, and infrastructural capabilities needed for its long-term independence.

Europe should be willing to finance large-scale industrial and technological programmes directly.

Strategic sectors should not be abandoned simply because production would be cheaper elsewhere in the short term.

Europe should preserve and develop capabilities in areas such as:

• semiconductor manufacturing;
• telecommunications;
• energy systems;
• nuclear technology;
• pharmaceuticals;
• railway technology;
• aerospace;
• satellite infrastructure;
• batteries;
• cybersecurity;
• cloud infrastructure;
• scientific instrumentation;
• critical industrial equipment.

Where necessary, public ownership, public-private structures, or European public enterprises should be considered.

The objective is not autarky but resilience.

Europe should remain open to international trade while retaining the ability to produce, maintain, and repair the systems on which its society depends.

Public procurement should be used as a strategic instrument.

When European institutions or public administrations purchase technological systems, they should evaluate more than the immediate purchase price.

Procurement decisions should consider:

• open standards;
• interoperability;
• access to source code;
• auditability;
• data portability;
• vendor lock-in;
• long-term maintenance;
• exit costs;
• localisation and control of data;
• cybersecurity;
• European maintenance capability;
• dependence on foreign suppliers.

Public authorities should be able to reject an apparently cheaper solution when it creates unacceptable long-term technological dependence.

Public procurement can also provide the stable demand required to build and maintain European technological ecosystems.

Technological sovereignty does not simply mean replacing an American or Asian supplier with a European proprietary supplier.

European ownership is not sufficient; European control and user freedom matter too.

A European company can create the same technological dependence as a foreign company if users cannot inspect, modify, migrate away from, or independently maintain its systems.

For this reason, European technological sovereignty should favour open standards, interoperability, free software, documented interfaces, data portability, and the ability to maintain critical systems independently of a single vendor.

Europe should develop and maintain a public, long-term GNU/Linux operating system under the GNU General Public License.

The objective should not be to create yet another short-lived national distribution or a symbolic public-sector project.

It should be a durable European digital infrastructure designed for broad use by:

• individuals;
• companies;
• industrial organisations;
• schools;
• universities;
• research institutions;
• public administrations;
• healthcare institutions;
• strategic industries.

The system should be based on free software, open standards, reproducible builds, transparent development, strong security practices, and long-term maintenance.

Its source code should remain freely available under copyleft licences, especially the GNU GPL where appropriate, so that public investment produces software that can be studied, audited, modified, redistributed, and improved by everyone.

The operating system should not exist only as a desktop distribution.

It should form part of a complete European digital platform including:

• European package repositories;
• reproducible and auditable build infrastructure;
• cryptographic package signing;
• secure update infrastructure;
• long-term support releases;
• professional support;
• hardware certification;
• enterprise administration tools;
• identity management;
• open document formats;
• development tools and SDKs;
• deployment tools for large organisations;
• strong documentation;
• accessibility;
• migration tools from proprietary systems.

The project should provide a stable technical foundation that can be maintained for decades rather than depending on short-term political programmes.

Public administrations should be among the first major users and contributors to a European GNU/Linux platform.

Public procurement can provide the stable demand, funding, testing, documentation, and long-term maintenance required for such a system to mature.

Software developed specifically for public administrations using public money should normally be released as free software.

Public investment should create reusable digital infrastructure rather than proprietary software that must subsequently be purchased again by other public institutions.

The same technological platform should nevertheless remain available to individuals and private organisations.

A public European operating system should not become a closed administrative system.

Its value would come precisely from being usable, modifiable, and maintainable by the entire European ecosystem.

A European free software strategy should not eliminate private enterprise.

On the contrary, free software can support a competitive ecosystem of European companies providing:

• development;
• integration;
• security auditing;
• technical support;
• hardware;
• hosting;
• maintenance;
• training;
• specialised industrial solutions.

The economic model should shift from artificial software scarcity and vendor lock-in toward services, expertise, maintenance, integration, and engineering.

Companies should be able to compete on the quality of their work without owning the user's technological dependency.

Europe suffers from insufficient digital literacy.

Too many citizens, decision-makers, organisations, and companies use critical digital systems without understanding the dependencies, security assumptions, or technological choices involved.

This weakness becomes particularly visible when institutions suffer cyberattacks, ransomware, data leaks, or service disruptions.

Cybersecurity cannot be reduced to purchasing security products.

It also requires technical literacy, competent system administration, understanding of operating systems and networks, software maintenance, cryptography, open standards, and the ability to inspect and control digital infrastructure.

Schools and universities should therefore teach more than the use of particular commercial applications.

Education should include:

• GNU/Linux;
• free software;
• open standards;
• networking;
• cybersecurity;
• cryptography;
• version control;
• programming;
• data formats;
• digital sovereignty;
• technological dependency;
• software supply chains.

Engineers, public servants, managers, and citizens should be capable of asking basic questions about the systems they use rather than treating software as a black box.

The European Union's 2026 Open Source Strategy is a welcome step in this direction.

It explicitly recognises open source as an instrument of technological sovereignty and calls for greater investment in open technologies, maintenance, skills, public-sector adoption, open standards, and critical digital infrastructure.

This direction should be pursued much further and transformed into durable European institutions and infrastructure.

Europe should create and maintain digital commons.

Software, standards, scientific tools, public data, libraries, digital infrastructure, and publicly funded technical work should be reusable wherever possible.

A project financed by one European institution should not need to be purchased again independently by dozens of other public organisations.

Shared European digital infrastructure could include:

• free software;
• scientific software;
• geographic data;
• public datasets;
• authentication infrastructure;
• open standards;
• software libraries;
• cybersecurity tools;
• administrative software;
• reusable public-sector components.

Public funding should create assets that accumulate over time rather than repeatedly financing incompatible proprietary systems.

Europe should develop an autonomous defence capability while retaining national armed forces.

The objective should not necessarily be to replace national armies with a single European army.

National armed forces can remain under national democratic control while being far more deeply coordinated at European level.

Europe should develop common capabilities in:

• procurement;
• logistics;
• communications;
• cybersecurity;
• intelligence cooperation;
• satellites;
• ammunition production;
• military research;
• interoperability;
• strategic transport;
• industrial capacity.

European countries should avoid unnecessary duplication while ensuring that critical military capabilities can be produced and maintained within Europe.

The objective is to ensure that Europe can defend itself against any external threat without being structurally dependent on another major power.

Energy policy should also be coordinated at European scale.

Europe should develop a deeply interconnected, resilient, low-carbon energy system.

This requires:

• stronger electricity interconnections;
• long-term grid planning;
• coordinated infrastructure development;
• nuclear expertise and industrial capacity;
• renewable generation where appropriate;
• energy storage where technically useful;
• electrification of transport and industry;
• reduced dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Energy technologies should be evaluated at system level.

The relevant criteria include carbon emissions, land use, material use, lifetime, infrastructure requirements, reliability, energy security, resource consumption, and total life-cycle impacts.

Short-term market prices should not be allowed to dominate decisions involving infrastructure designed to operate for several decades.

The European project should not be reduced to the creation and regulation of a single market.

Economic competition is a tool, not the purpose of European integration.

European institutions should be able to:

• protect strategic industries;
• finance major infrastructure;
• support public services;
• coordinate industrial policy;
• provide state aid where strategically justified;
• create European public enterprises;
• support domestic production;
• use public procurement strategically;
• invest directly in research and technology.

Competition rules should not prevent Europe from maintaining capabilities that are necessary for environmental protection, resilience, technological independence, or collective security.

Where appropriate, European procurement should be able to give preference to European production when this is necessary to preserve strategic capabilities.

European integration should ultimately be a political project.

Its purpose should be to allow European citizens to exercise democratic control over problems that can no longer be managed effectively by individual states alone.

A stronger Europe should therefore combine:

• democratic legitimacy;
• social protection;
• scientific ambition;
• environmental responsibility;
• strategic autonomy;
• technological sovereignty;
• public infrastructure;
• economic solidarity;
• individual liberty.

Europe should be powerful enough to defend its interests, democratic enough to remain accountable to its citizens, and technologically capable enough to avoid dependence on powers whose interests may not coincide with its own.