Europe's US dependence is at boiling point, but our leaders only want to talk about EU bureaucracy

Germany's chancellor entered today's EU summit with a long diatribe about Brussels red tape. Meanwhile calls from Sanchez and Lagarde to urgently de-risk the US relationship are ignored.

On Monday, I went to remotely check my ring home security camera and found it wasn’t working. Alarmed, I asked a friend to check his—it was also inaccessible. “Alexa, what’s going on with Ring?” we asked. No response. A Google search revealed the culprit: Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud service storing enormous amounts of data, was experiencing a worldwide outage. It was impacting everything from banking portals to language-learning apps. Service was restored after a few hours, but it served as a pointed reminder of how dependent Europe is on US cloud services—and what could happen if those services were suddenly cut off.

While other parts of the world such as India and Brazil have recognised the danger and are quickly developing alternative domestic services, Europe seems determined to ignore every warning signal coming from across the Atlantic. As Alan Beattie wrote in the Financial Times today, the outage, “emphasised how the big data companies have become chokepoints for global commerce. Accidents can be fixed, but imagine how such conduits could be manipulated against economic or political rivals by a rogue actor. Someone, in fact, like Donald Trump.”

“The US ordering its companies to restrict data access for whole sectors or foreign economies would be extraordinary, but not impossible under a president who apparently regards the US tech sector as an extension of his administration and may grow weary of playing with goods tariffs. In cloud services, as with other network technologies like internet satellites, other big economic powers are rushing to build resilience to US hostility. As usual the most salient case is the EU, whose pursuit of “strategic autonomy” is hampered by a failure to co-ordinate and a reliance on regulation rather than hard cash.”

“The likelihood that Trump will weaponise the US cloud services may not be huge, but the costs if he does are potentially catastrophic. If the EU wants to Trump-proof its economy and become a strategic power, it needs to act more like one.”

These cloud services are only one way in which Europe’s economy is dependent on a backbone of American infrastructure. Today Bloomberg broke the story that the Trump administration is considering cutting off US technology access to China in retaliation for Beijing’s rare earth restrictions (which I wrote about earlier this week). China has actually developed a capable way to withstand this attack using its own economic infrastructure. But guess who hasn’t? Europe. “In effect, this would make American technology radioactive: any company touching US software (Microsoft, AWS, etc.) becomes ineligible to do business with the world’s largest economy [China] in PPP terms,” observed French pundit Arnaud Bertrand today. “A German auto supplier using Windows? Can’t sell to Chinese carmakers. A Japanese manufacturer using AWS? Too bad, you lost the Chinese market. If this goes forward, we’re likely to see global companies rushing to purge every trace of US software from their tech stacks.”

American dependence at the Council

But Europe is so dependent on US economic infrastructure that it’s hard to see how this could even be done. I’m here at the European Council summit in Brussels, in the giant atrium of the Just Lips building where the press sits. As I look around me, I see a press corps and a political infrastructure entirely reliant on American services. I’m using a Mac, the person next to me is using a Windows PC. Our data is being uploaded to US-controlled clouds. We’re receiving updates with Meta-owned Whatsapp. We call our editors using our Apple or Android phones. If we take a coffee break in the canteen, there is no way to pay them without using an American company: Visa or Mastercard.

It is this last point that European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde has been raising alarm about. She’s come to today’s summit yet again urging a discussion on developing European payment alternatives - specifically the digital euro. The effort is stalled and Lagarde has asked for an urgent discussion with leaders about that tonight over dinner, warning that Europe’s payments dependency on America is a huge security risk. But yet again, she’s being ignored. I’m told that the subject is going to be given short shrift tonight because it will be crowded out by other issues - notably the “competitiveness” discussion where our European leaders are warning that the thing that needs the most urgent action in Europe right now is cutting red tape for companies. And it just so happens that the slashing and burning of EU climate and digital legislation they are pushing for is exactly what was ordered by President Trump as part of the surrender deal forced upon the EU in July.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz entered the summit this morning with a lot to say—not about the US president’s erratic on-again-off-again support of Vladimir Putin, not about Trump’s trade threats against Europe, not about Europe being defenceless against Russia without US protection, but rather about EU red tape. Over the past three months he has