Description
“Digital sovereignty” has emerged as a hotly debated topic in European politics (Floridi 2020). But although the emergence of a coherent European digital sovereignty agenda seems unlikely, it is still useful to take a closer look at the digital sovereignty discourse (Christakis 2020). We contend that this discourse is based on a geopolitical perspective which this paper aims to re- and deconstruct. We deploy theories of critical geopolitics (Ó Tuathail 1996) and conduct a close reading of core European texts on digital sovereignty. Our results indicate three dominant themes in the discourse: First, the digital transformation is a threat to European prosperity and security. Second, the concept of digital sovereignty aims at levelling out a (perceived) loss of autonomy which results from the increasing power of Big Tech quasi-monopolies (Atal 2020) and the threat of cyber-espionage by rival powers, especially China but also the United States. And finally, digital sovereignty is necessary to protect an imagined “European way of life” which is posited as a “third way” vis-à-vis American capitalism and Chinese authoritarianism. As such this article makes a valuable contribution for our critical understanding of how EU cybersecurity policies tie into and impact on wider geopolitical imaginaries.
