[sajithdilshan]

I honestly wonder whether the EU can afford to spend on technological sovereignty. With an aging population and the need to maintain welfare states, governments will have to allocate more and more of future budgets to expanding and sustaining welfare programs (statutory health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc.). That ultimately means higher taxes, a larger government workforce, and a shrinking private sector. Maybe they will have enough money to maintain the existing status quo, but not sure where the additional capital would come from to invest in digital sovereignty.

[pjc50]

"EU welfare state" is a meme that doesn't survive looking closely at the actual figures. Especially if you compare things like state pensions properly; the US moves these into a different column labelled "social security", but that doesn't mean they're not part of the state!

Note that the alternative is sending money overseas to rent US infrastructure. It may make a lot of sense to deploy spending locally where it stays in the economy rather than overseas, a standard "import substitution" play.

[amarcheschi]

Plus, us already spends much more on healthcare per capita than other countries https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

[pirate787]

Import substitution has failed consistently as an economic strategy.

[celeritascelery]

While the EU welfare is not that much larger than the US (maybe 5% more of GDP), the US also has much more money, a larger portion of the population working, and higher population growth. They also have the technical and business knowledge in tech that the EU lacks (e.g. silicon, rocketry, hyperscalers, etc).

[notahacker]

Most of the "digital sovereignty" stuff is spending money on companies that intend to sell services at a profit and pay taxes on it. So they absolutely can afford to do it (and governments have more routes to getting money back than just exits) provided you back the right companies. That's probably more easily achieved in digital sovereignty than space launch though.

[sajithdilshan]

You mean government subsidizing the companies and taxing them in return? How is that a viable model? Also subsidizing means tax payers put on the burden and there is no guarantee that the companies subsidized by the governments would turn a profit or just burn through the subsidies and go bankrupt.

[alephnerd]

The EU has the capacity, but will be working closely with other partners like India, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Vietnam, and the UAE as capital and/or technology partners.

For example, Eutelsat - which is providing the backbone for GOVSATCOM and IRIS2 - is a three-way partnership between India's Bharti Group (Sunil Mittal), the French, and the UK. Or GCAP where Japan's Mitsubishi Group is acting as both a technology and capital partner to Italy and the UK.

This was also a major driver behind the EU-India Defense Pact and the EU-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership - both of which were overshadowed by the EU-India FTA.

A multilateral organization like the EU has the muscle to integrate and cooperate with other partners, which is something that shouldn't be underestimated, as this builds resilience via redundancy.

Edit: Interesting how this is the second time [0] in the past few weeks where an HN comment I wrote that was optimistic about the EU's capacity was downvoted. There's a reason the PRC is still conducting industrial espionage on EU institutions [1].

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696996

[1] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2026/01/14/...

[Fnoord]

> Interesting how this is the second time [0] in the past few weeks where an HN comment I wrote that was optimistic about the EU's capacity was downvoted.

Nothing new there, but I wouldn't assume Chinese bot army being behind it. The Russians, American MAGA, European alt-right each have an interest in such suppression (and RU and USA also conduct industrial espionage on EU). You may assume each of these parties is present in a thread about European sovereignty, but either way the mods discourage any discussion about moderation. You're best off emailing one of them.

[sajithdilshan]

But then again it won't be sovereign. EU has been doing the same with US companies and now they are switching US for a different country/countries

[baklavaEmperor]

If trust is the constraint, Israel’s track record makes it an odd choice for EU sovereign systems.

[philipwhiuk]

> With an aging population and the need to maintain welfare states, governments will have to allocate more and more of future budgets to expanding and sustaining welfare programs (statutory health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, etc.). That ultimately means higher taxes, a larger government workforce, and a shrinking private sector.

All of this is also true in the US.

[alephnerd]

And China excluding the welfare part - China has an extremely weak welfare system for a state at it's economic level and the Xi admin remains deeply opposed to what it derogatorily terms as "Welfarism" [0].

[0] - http://theory.people.com.cn/n1/2021/1116/c40531-32283350.htm...

[nradov]

That's true of all developed countries to a degree, but the USA still has a significantly better demographic profile than the EU.

[sajithdilshan]

Not really, US population would continue to grow, while EU declines[1]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/india-china-europe-...

[seydor]

china has been an invaluable partner. Green energy supplies a large part of energy consumed in europe now, and car electrification has become popular thanks to cheap chinese EVs. I will not be surprised to see chinese drones or weapons too

[pjc50]

Chinese drones yes, there's no equivalent of the US DJI ban as far as I'm aware. China have been supplying both sides in the Ukraine war.

Chinese weapons .. no. Plenty of traditional EU arms companies to do that, and this is one area where I'm OK with the traditional EU protectionism.

A more interesting question is the two big countries which are part of NATO, on the European continent, but NOT part of the EU: UK and Turkey.

[alephnerd]

> china has been an invaluable partner

The PRC has stated it will continue to back Russia against Ukraine [0] which is a red line for the EU. Additionally, the PRC has been running disinfo ops against EU member states tech exports [1] while still attempting industrial espionage on European institutions [2].

China will not become a trusted partner of the EU as long as:

1. It continues to conduct industrial espionage against EU institutions

2. Attempts to undermine EU industrial and dual use exports

3. It continues to support Russia diplomatically and materially at the expense of Ukraine

4. It attempts to undermine the EU as an institution [3][4][5][6]

5. It continues to threaten EU nationals through physical [7] and legal [8] intimidation.

It's the same reason trust has reduced in the US as well.

---

[0] - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316875/ch...

[1] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...

[2] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2026/01/14/...

[3] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/page.ht...

[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/1ed0b791-a447-48f4-9c38-abbf5f283...

[5] - https://www.ft.com/content/81700fc4-8f23-4bec-87e9-59a83f215...

[6] - https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/ex-mitarbeiter...

[7] - https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/07/02/deux-espio...

[8] - https://www.intelligenceonline.fr/asie-pacifique/2025/12/23/...

[jcfrei]

Not sure why you are getting downvoted - I'm wondering the same thing. Catching up is inherently more expensive than just maintaining a lead. And on top of that the EU pensioners will oppose any reallocation of resources outside of their retirement / pension schemes. The EU does have more fiscal headroom than the US, ie. lower debt per GDP and lower debt per capita - so through borrowing they could mobilize some more funds. But that's about it and I'm doubtful that's going to be enough.

[sajithdilshan]

I guess a lot of Europeans don't want to see the real logical questioning and downvoting out of pure frustration.

Also EU doesn't have fiscal freedom. Germany is the only country barely keeping it together and without any hard reform France is a ticking time bomb when it come to its debt-to-GDP.

[numpad0]

"Arianespace is pathetically behind the times as launch services provider and no one is even cost competitive with SpaceX" types of offhand Internet comments are just literal propaganda with zero substance. [WARN] messages on Linux Kernel consoles bear more importance than those.