The inequality of EU digital sovereignty: core, periphery, and digital divides in EU politics

This article interrogates the relationship between the EU’s strive for digital sovereignty (DS) and the existing intra-European inequalities. Adopting a socio-material approach and a normative perspective, it focuses on two aspects of the problem: redistribution of resources and infrastructures, and representation within EU networks and debates. Mixed methods are used to bring evidence concerning the allocation of EU funding and infrastructures, as well as the composition of business networks and the character of discourse produced within them. While the results are not uniform, the overall findings suggest an inherent paradox in the EU digital sovereignty agenda: the very initiatives that are supposed to make Europe sovereign, secure and competitive in relation to external powers may have the opposite results within the EU, contributing to growing digital divides. This is an issue for the legitimacy of EU digital policies, even potentially further undermining the cohesion of the EU as such. Apart from highlighting a politically relevant problem, the article contributes to the existing DS scholarship by bringing in insights from literatures on digital colonialism and digital capitalism, thereby advancing the recent calls for the development of a critical perspective on digital sovereignty.