Computational Sovereignty: Structural Economic Risks for European Competitiveness in AI-Mediated Markets

This working paper examines whether the transition from human-mediated to AI-mediated markets creates new structural risks for European competitiveness. It introduces the concept of Computational Sovereignty as the capacity of firms, assets, and institutions to remain discoverable, interpretable, comparable, and actionable by AI systems that increasingly mediate economic demand. The paper develops Representation Capital as a proposed production factor in AI-mediated economies, formulates the Law of Computational Visibility, and introduces the Computational Transmission Mechanism as a complement to traditional monetary and industrial policy channels. It argues that European competitiveness may increasingly depend not only on capital, innovation, energy, and digital infrastructure, but also on computational market infrastructure: the layer through which economic entities become machine-readable, verifiable, and eligible for AI-mediated discovery and transaction. The analysis is theoretical and policy-oriented. It positions Computational Sovereignty as a complementary framework to existing European policy debates on digital sovereignty, the Capital Markets Union, the Digital Euro, AI governance, and competitiveness. The paper does not present empirical validation; instead, it offers hypotheses, indicators, scenarios, and a roadmap for further measurement, institutional testing, and policy discussion.