Digital sovereignty: at the Senate, they hold hearings. But when do they act?

The Senate did what it knows how to do: hold a series of hearings on digital sovereignty.

Yet another one.

Experts, industry players, representatives of the State. Plenty of clear-eyed observations. Plenty of pious wishes. But in the end, always the same French reflex: saying we should have done better, without ever taking the decisions that would truly change things.

There is no shortage of reports. There is a shortage of courage.

For ten years now, we have heard the same phrases:

• "We must support European players."
• "We must strengthen digital independence."
• "The administration must lead by example."

But in practice, we keep on:

• Signing contracts with Microsoft for the national education system.
• Migrating local authorities onto Google Workspace.
• Hosting our health data on non-European clouds.

Everyone sees the problem. No one decides.

How to raise customer loyalty.

When the Senate marvels at our dependence, it is almost comical

The strategic State has been outsourced at a forced march for ten years now.

Cloud and software SMEs are being swallowed up or shut out of tenders written too narrowly. Public decision-makers buy American without owning what it entails. And the few schemes like SecNumCloud have neither the agility nor the resources to carry weight.

We have reached the point of regretting that we never had a "European champion". But who supported that champion? Who gave it access to the big contracts, the public references, the diplomatic backing?

Sovereignty does not need conferences. It needs clear choices.

We could perfectly well:

• Decide that any sensitive public data will be hosted in France or Europe, full stop.
• Allocate part of the IT budgets to local players, even if they are not "market leaders".
• Build in security and independence as political criteria, not just technical ones.

But for that, you have to accept taking a position. Stepping out of the comfort of industrial balances. Upsetting some partners.

And that is precisely what we do not do.

The time for observing is over. It is time to take ownership.

The next major incident will not come from a lack of AI or sovereign cloud. It will come from our inability to build a coherent model.

The Senate can go on holding hearings. But History will mainly remember what we let slip away.

And for now, we are letting everything slip.

Learn more about Christophe Mazzola