I recently contributed expert input on artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and photonics to the European Commission's study on Europe's critical digital capacities beyond 2027.
These are often treated as three separate priorities. They are not.
AI is becoming the intelligence layer of the economy. Photonics is part of its physical nervous system—moving, sensing and increasingly processing information through light. Quantum could reshape how we measure, communicate and eventually compute.
But none of them can deliver European technological sovereignty alone.
Europe's central problem is no longer invention. It is deployment.
The study found more than 20,000 advanced digital-technology startups in the EU in 2025. Only 3.5% had scaled. Europe produces excellent science, valuable patents and promising companies, but repeatedly struggles to convert them into industrial capacity and widespread adoption.
A patent is not a supply chain. A pilot is not a market. A model is not an AI economy.
"Europe does not have an innovation shortage. It has a conversion problem."
AI Is More Than a Model
AI depends on an entire system: advanced chips, data centres, cloud infrastructure, high-performance computing, connectivity, data, cooling, energy and skills.
Europe has genuine opportunities in industrial, scientific, trustworthy, open and domain-specific AI. Our healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and energy sectors possess knowledge and data that cannot simply be scraped from the public internet.
But those advantages mean little without reliable access to compute and cloud.
Photonics Is the Infrastructure We Rarely See
Photonics enables fibre networks, semiconductor manufacturing, medical imaging, LiDAR, satellite communications, quantum systems and increasingly the high-speed interconnects inside data centres.
Europe has major strengths in industrial lasers, lithography, precision optics and healthcare applications. It accounted for 24.5% of global photonics patent applications in 2022.
Yet Europe performs under 4% of global photonic integrated-circuit assembly.
That is the European paradox in miniature: leadership in knowledge, weakness in industrial scale.
Light may be part of the future of computing. But it still needs factories, packaging, design tools, skilled technicians and customers.
Quantum Requires Patience and Infrastructure
Quantum sensing and metrology are approaching applications in navigation, medical imaging, environmental monitoring and infrastructure inspection. Quantum communication has nearer-term uses in highly sensitive networks.
Quantum computing is less mature. Its potential is significant, but the timing of commercially useful quantum advantage remains uncertain.
Europe should therefore build capabilities across the full stack: software, photonics, control electronics, cryogenics, fabrication, metrology, testbeds and integration with classical high-performance computing.
Quantum will not operate in isolation. Neither should Europe's quantum strategy.
The Digital Economy Is Physical
The digital economy is often described as weightless. It is not.
It consists of data centres, cleanrooms, fibre networks, cooling systems, substations, cables, transformers and enormous amounts of electricity.
The European Commission wants to at least triple Europe's data-centre capacity within five to seven years. At the same time, Europe must electrify transport, heating and industry.
These ambitions will collide unless digital and energy policy are designed together.
"A continent that cannot power its compute cannot be sovereign in AI."
Sovereignty Is the Capacity to Choose
Europe does not need to manufacture everything itself. Sovereignty is not isolation. It is having credible alternatives and retaining meaningful control over critical data, infrastructure, software and supply-chain decisions.
It also requires interoperability. A supposedly sovereign cloud that creates a new form of lock-in is not genuinely sovereign.
The objective should be a federated European computing environment spanning cloud, edge, high-performance computing, AI factories and eventually quantum resources—with open interfaces that allow data and workloads to move securely.
Sovereignty is not having no partners. It is having the ability to make your own decisions.
Stop Funding Technologies. Start Building Systems.
Europe's next technology strategy should stop treating AI, quantum and photonics as separate funding categories.
It should build the stack beneath them: energy, chips, cloud, connectivity, fabrication, data, capital and skills.
Europe is not missing technologies.
It is missing integration at scale.
Read the European Commission study on critical digital capacities beyond 2027. Views are my own.