BRUSSELS - The European Commission proposed laws on June 3 to boost domestic cloud, AI and semiconductor industries and cut reliance on US Big Tech, defying US government criticism of the bloc’s crackdown on its industry.

The Cloud and AI Development Act and Chips Act 2.0 form part of Europe’s push for technological sovereignty and its efforts to close the gap with US and Chinese rivals.

The Commission wants to double the EU’s global market share of semiconductors to 20 per cent by 2030.

“We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen warned of the risk of “kill switches”, referring to the possibility that a foreign government or a company at the behest of authorities could disable or disrupt services.

“We want to be sure that in the critical fields we are always able to control the services and control the data in Europe,” she told reporters.

The proposal sets out sovereignty requirements for cloud providers in sensitive sectors ​such as banking, energy and healthcare, driven in part by concerns over US laws, such as the Cloud Act, that require US-based providers to grant authorities access to data even ​if it is stored abroad.

For critical public contracts, vendors will be required to ensure that software and hardware are made in the EU, excluding non-European companies from controlling data and services, Virkkunen told reporters.

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